


Arc 1:  Heart

by Hthar, panaili



Series: The Third Side [1]
Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awkward Family Reunions, Cross Marian is an Asshole, Cross Marian's A+ Parenting, Death Threats, Hostage Situations, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Maximum Hurt/Minimum Comfort, Mental Anguish, Panic Attacks, Possession, Psychological Torture, Slow Burn, Taking Liberties with Backstory, Torture, identity crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 53,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27578236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hthar/pseuds/Hthar, https://archiveofourown.org/users/panaili/pseuds/panaili
Summary: [AU/Canon divergent from Chapter 228] Lavi is still held in the clutches of the Noah Clan. After a narrow escape in General Tiedoll's Innocence carriage, Allen and company face a terrible ultimatum and uncover more secrets than any of them are prepared to handle. Rated M for depictions of torture, gore, violence, and language. Part 1 of 3 in the series "The Third Side."Series Summary:  Allen and his hodgepodge band escape their pursuers only to face unbelievable truths, long odds, and the near-end of the world. Nea is still a nuisance, Cross is still an asshole, and the past is a tangled web of lies. But first things first - Lavi needs rescuing. Rated M for depictions of torture, gore, violence, and language. Eventual Lavi/Allen.
Relationships: Lavi/Allen Walker
Series: The Third Side [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015854
Comments: 36
Kudos: 46





	1. The Library

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This collection of stories (divided into arcs under a single series) is an ongoing collaboration between me and panaili (aka the infamous Beta-roomie) since 2018. Life interrupted for a while, but we've finally hashed things out and pulled it all together! So far, Arc 1 is complete; we are aiming for a biweekly posting schedule. We are alternating writing chapters, and in Arc 1, I wrote 1-3-5 and she wrote 2-4 (partly because she really loves writing ACTION). There will be two standalone Interlude stories between the arcs - she is writing the first one, and I will be writing the second. 
> 
> This project has been insanely challenging (but fun), so please take a moment to leave a review/comment and let us know what you think! Honestly, the whole thing was sparked because we were both so worried about Lavi being tortured all this time, with no end in sight :( Enjoy!

The Library

Tyki was not generally a fan of Wisely's antics. Aside from preferring to keep his thoughts to himself, which was all but impossible in the vicinity of his nephew, he just couldn't stomach the boy's cold, borderline haughty personality for any amount of time. He didn't understand how someone who was routinely incapacitated by simple headaches could be so high and mighty.

If Wisely died and didn't reincarnate for another century, it would be too soon.

So it came as a genuine shock when it was Wisely, of all people, who gave him an offer that he couldn't refuse.

The white-haired boy had dragged himself into Tyki's study with his usual dull look, as he occasionally did when he had no other tasks. He was entirely too unenthusiastic for a psychic, really. Tyki snapped his book shut and smirked toward the door, collecting an arsenal of dirty thoughts at the forefront of his mind in defense against invasion.

"Well, I take it Sheril sent you here – that or you must be desperately bored, if you've come seeking my company," he said, smoothing out the words in a way that completed his obscene defensive strategy.

Wisely flinched back. He covered his eyes, too, as if that would have any hope of preventing him from viewing the porn show lighting up Tyki's brain in painful neon brilliance.

"You're disgusting," Wisely muttered as he schooled the pinched look on his face and returned to the default dullness. "But yes, this _is_ something of a last resort. I have a little project on my hands that requires an assistant, unfortunately. Someone with half a brain and nothing better to do. Multilingual skills might be useful, as well. Interested?"

Tyki just stretched in his armchair and reopened his book, basking in the earlier moment of victory. His mind was no fortress, but he had his ways. "Depends on what I get out of it. This book isn't half bad…"

"What if you could read a Bookman, instead?" Wisely said.

The words hung dead in the air. It was an intriguing thought.

Tyki sat up straight, inch by inch, and narrowed his eyes. "I assume you're referring to our redheaded hostage. You know I only 'read' the human body, not the mind."

"I also know you like a challenge," countered Wisely.

Tyki eyed him warily. "Didn't Sheril hand him over to be a new plaything for your sick mental games, or whatever it is you do for fun? I already played my part. He should be putty in your hands at this point."

"He may be half-dead, and he _is_ only an apprentice," Wisely continued, one particular stress vein standing out on his temple, "but his mind is nearing the master Bookman's level of encryption. It's all I can do to open the doors, and I can't move freely inside his head when I'm busy being a doorjamb. Someone else has to do the exploring for me, which could prove challenging. Possibly dangerous. But there's no telling what secrets you might uncover."

"Hm, that is a tempting prospect," Tyki murmured. He imagined that it might be similar to experiencing one of Road's dreams, and those could be quite the trip, if a tad abstract. It did break up the tedium, for sure. And this current proposal might give him something beyond the unique experience, if there were juicy secrets for the taking.

Few secrets eluded the Noah of pleasure. The Bookman Clan held a trove of them.

After a long moment of consideration, he slid up from his seat, meandering toward the door with his hands in his pockets – an unpolished but automatic gesture from a far-removed life. "I guess I really don't have anything better to do. Let's go."

* * *

"Ugh, so disgusting," Wisely whined under his breath, opening the cell door with a metallic creak. He brought a hand to his nose and mouth, glaring at the slumped form in the farthest dark corner, the room lit only by torchlight spilling in from the hallway. "I need a mask to even _breathe_ , much less concentrate."

Tyki shrugged and took a drag on his half-used cigarette. "Suit yourself. I'll wait. You should hurry and protect those delicate senses of yours."

He took another drag and breathed out a long puff of smoke, making a shooing motion with his free hand. Wisely gave him a nasty look but left without comment.

He wasn't wrong about the smell. Hosing down a semi-conscious prisoner from time to time could only do so much for the odor of unwashed and soiled human, and the Bookman's apprentice had been in chains with minimal rations for nearly four months. Tyki honestly just didn't care – some portions of his human memory held a vast array of unpleasant smells that were not so different from this, and his own smoking habit masked some of the intensity.

However, there was a strange characteristic of rot to the air as well. He'd come to associate that smell with Feedler's ability, as his parasites continued to hold the boy at the threshold of death's door. This was the stench of a life force draining away.

Tyki took a few steps inside for a closer look. He dropped his cigarette butt and ground it into the grimy cell floor, procuring a match from his jacket. He struck the match and held it to a nearby torch on the wall, watching as the flame took hold and the shadows slid away from the body in the corner.

The boy's wrists and ankles were shackled, both sets connected to the floor by a longer chain. His signature exorcist coat had long since been removed, revealing worn and blood-spattered clothing that hung loose over his wasting form – a form that looked all the more skeletal for its height. His long legs were sprawled on the stone floor under what were once fitted trousers. His head had fallen back to rest on the wall at an odd angle, exposing a bruised, gaunt jaw to the light.

Only his eyepatch and flaming hair were unmistakable, the latter still held back from his face by his signature scarf. Even dirty and matted, that hair looked like a small crop of fire on his head. Every encounter with him – suddenly Tyki recalled the name "Lavi" being thrown around by his comrades – flashed through his mind in an instant:

He had met him with Allen Walker and company on the train, observing him second-hand as he tracked Walker and his comrades in their travels. He had taunted the redhead and fought with him over Walker's apparent death. And Tyki was pretty sure he had fought both him and Walker together, though that last memory was unclear and blurred by Joyd's total control.

If Tyki had not known better, he would never have pegged this _Lavi_ as the Bookman's apprentice. Only his skills proved the fact. Bookmen were not driven by passion and did not form attachments.

This boy had shown himself the opposite. Tyki didn't even need to poke around in his mind to know that much.

"Having second thoughts?"

The muffled question came from the door. Wisely had returned from his supply run wearing a thick filter mask and carrying two large cushions.

Tyki gave Wisely a sly smile. "Just thinking that this ought to be one interesting trip."

Wisely said nothing as he carried one cushion to the opposite end of the room, dropping it next to the wall. He then dropped the other one against the wall near Tyki, barely a meter from their prisoner. Returning to the first cushion, Wisely seated himself cross-legged and gestured for Tyki to sit. The hand resting in his lap held a small, black object which Tyki could not make out.

"You have to be in my targeted zone to go in," Wisely droned. "My apologies."

"I couldn't care less." Tyki plopped down on the cushion and crossed his arms behind his head against the wall, still grinning. "Let's get this show on the road."

Wisely glowered back at him, but his eyes dropped shut a moment later. His other three eyes activated with an eerie glow – the same glow that soon began to emanate from Lavi's forehead nearby.

Then, Tyki's consciousness plunged into darkness.

* * *

Tyki opened his eyes to a vast, black nothing. It lasted for the space of a heartbeat.

A dim glow like a torch fire burst into view in the distance. He took one step forward, intending to begin the long trek to the light, and was instantly pulled toward it like a satellite to the sun. The speed took his breath away. Tyki dropped to his knees on arrival, panting on an ornate rug at the threshold of something, somewhere…

He looked up at what appeared to be an entrance. A towering set of double doors, ancient and carved with unreadable symbols that almost felt familiar. They flickered in the firelight of disembodied torches on either side. The carvings spiraled from the outermost edges toward a center – not an exact center, but lower, where the door handles would be mounted.

Tyki stood and squinted for a long moment at the strange "handle" configuration. Recognition dawned, and he leapt to his feet with his arms blocking his face.

He was staring into the gaping mouth of a dragon's head, large enough to swallow him. Curved golden horns and fanning scales gleamed against the wood, and the torchlight intermittently flickered off the inside of the mouth to reveal a dark opening in its throat.

This figure was a _guardian_ , not a door handle. Tyki knew there was no key in the world big enough to fit that yawning keyhole.

Or so he thought.

Tyki sensed Wisely's presence on the edges of his awareness – he wasn't sure how, but he did. And in that moment, a small black object shot past him from behind, straight into the dragon's mouth. A thin black handle, barely protruding, was all that proved it was still in place.

He had finally worked out what he was seeing – Lavi's Innocence, his hammer – when the hammer itself grew to fit the keyhole. Tyki couldn't see the growth inside the dragon's mouth, but he felt a sudden, magnified pulse at the hammer's expansion. It almost seemed alive.

It turned in the keyhole on its own. Sounds of creaking, scraping and groaning machinations followed as the doors opened inward. These doors had been barricaded. They were clearly not meant to be opened from the outside. Not ever.

A wave of apprehension washed over Tyki. He was not welcome here.

However, as he took cautious steps toward the doorway, he felt the repellent energy mostly shooting past him – aimed at the interloper who had forced the doors open.

He looked back for a moment, vaguely noticing that the torchlight had illuminated more than just the massive doors. He had been standing in a sparsely populated foyer, its only contents a small, narrow table to the right "wall" of the foyer and a full-length mirror suspended on the left "wall" – it appeared to be floating, as there was no physical surface where the edges of the space should have existed. The table was cluttered with a pile of cobweb-covered scrolls, and the mirror was cracked and foggy.

He did not dare approach either of them. Just a glance at the dark mirror made him shudder. Tyki got the feeling that Wisely had not seen anything but the doors.

In any case, he hoped that Wisely was strong enough to keep him from being trapped _inside_ those doors. It felt like a very real possibility the instant he stepped through them, entering the apprentice Bookman's mind.

Tyki stared.

Lavi's mind, it turned out, was a vast library. Like his would-be title suggested, he was a living collection of books.

Numerous shelves rose from the wood slat floor to an unimaginably high ceiling, lit only by a row of disembodied torches mounted on another nonexistent "wall" in the front of the room. Other than the solid floor, the entire space appeared to be a dome defined by spots of firelight. Tyki suspected the library existed within a massive, dark void, its boundaries immaterial.

Each shelf had a large engraved plaque on its end with a short word or phrase, as far as Tyki could tell. The few plaques close enough to read were each written in a different language; from where he stood, Tyki could decipher two of them, and those two were names. Presumably, they were the apprentice Bookman's past names. There were so many shelves to his left and right that it was difficult to count them, and they stretched so deeply into the cavernous room that he couldn't see an end.

Tyki wondered if Wisely had been clued in to this eventuality – if he had gotten a brief glimpse into an even more mind-bending collection of books inside the doors of the master Bookman before being rejected from entry to that superior mind. It would explain the mention of Tyki's "multilingual skills."

He needed to get his bearings. Tyki closed his eyes, taking in the silence of the library. In a few moments, his ears tweaked at the faint clink of metal resonating across the space. Pockets of undefined energy hummed from opposite sides of the room as well, the sensation raising hairs on his skin.

Distantly, a forceful whisper scratched out sounds too quiet to understand. It came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Another chill ran down his spine.

Tyki opened his eyes. He had to assume there was an order to this library—it might run chronologically, perhaps left to right? It didn't really matter other than giving him a place to start.

He turned and walked to his left, grabbing a small lantern from a desk just inside the entrance. No one sat in the chair, but he could almost sense a presence watching him from the space, and that made him hurry his steps toward the farthest shelf he could find. If the voice had been coming from there, he didn't want to find out just yet.

Tyki had passed over twenty shelves when he reached the end of the row – if his assumption had been correct about the order, he had arrived at the first chronological shelf. He raised his lantern to read the plaque, but it contained unfamiliar characters. Chinese?

Closing his eyes again, he tried to hone in on a pocket of energy farther down. He felt along the shelves of dusty books, hands passing over long chains that ran from top to bottom – no doubt the source of the sounds he'd heard – until he felt that the energy was buzzing just above his head.

He set the lantern on the highest shelf he could reach and began to climb one of the chains, using the shelves like rungs. About halfway up, Tyki felt the hum of energy passing over him in waves. It took form in his mind – it was an emotion radiating from one of the books. He dragged his hand over the shelf in question until the spine of one book shocked his fingers as if he'd touched a live wire.

He had found a lead.

Tyki opened the book. While the energy continued to hit him, bringing a sense of unrelenting fear that was not his own, he could not read the characters inside. He bored his eyes into the content and tried to gather meaning, to discern _anything_ there, as he flipped through the pages frantically. The ache in his head grew stronger and stronger with every passing second, making each subsequent line a trial.

After a long minute of pain-laden searching, the book suddenly snapped shut with a blast of energy so strong it knocked Tyki from the shelf without mercy. He hit the floor, surely bruising his tailbone, and bounced backward into the opposite shelf with a jangle of chains.

"Fuck this," he hissed under his breath, unsure if his curses were aimed at the apprentice Bookman's use of foreign language or Wisely's plan to come in here in the first place. Probably both. He got to his feet with a huff and dusted himself off, recovering the lantern. This entire shelf would likely be useless.

Considering that he'd ventured very far down the length of the shelf on his first attempt, Tyki decided to follow it to the opposite side of the room and move along the shelves from there. He wanted to see just how far back the shelves really stretched. If the plaque at the end was readable, he theorized, perhaps the attached shelf would be worth exploring.

At the end the first shelf, Tyki saw something that stopped him in his tracks. He stood flat against the shelf of books and chains, just inside the row, and looked down the nonexistent "wall" at this end of the room.

Opposite the end of every shelf, a full-length mirror hung on the immaterial wall. Tyki had no clue as to their function, except for the obvious and alarming fact that they did _not_ reflect the ends of the shelves. They were obscured in darkness, just like the mirror in the strange foyer.

Tyki's heart began to race. He felt an overwhelming sense that he needed to avoid those looming mirrors, dread building in his chest like he was facing his own doom. He closed his eyes, trying to regain composure, but that served to worsen his panic.

The whispering voice was louder down here. It was louder near the mirrors.

Taking a deep breath, Tyki began the long and cautious walk back the way he came. He would have to read the plaques from the front and follow them as far as he dared.

* * *

The task became more daunting the further he went. Tyki worked his way through the handful of shelves with readable plaques – Romantic languages, which he could handle – with few results. Those shelves did not contain the 'charged' books he had been seeking, and the few he peeked into contained nothing remarkable. The Bookmen followed wars. He had barely glanced at the titles and prefaces announcing war-related tragedies within, unimpressed by the endless recounting of human tragedy.

Finally, Tyki approached the last shelf in the room – the forty-ninth. The plaque was, predictably, labeled LAVI. He assumed the entries would mainly be in English, to account his Black Order experiences, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

The entire shelf was humming with energy in multiple pockets. Tyki resolved to begin at the beginning and climbed his way to a book that caught his fancy. The word HEVLASKA intrigued him – after the recent Order invasion, the Earl had mentioned a few things about her purpose there.

He brought the book back down to the ground level, wincing at the shocks of emotion attached, and cracked it open.

_Komui assured me that it was harmless,_ he read a couple of pages in, _but my master seemed uneasy, as if this mandatory ritual could bind me to the Order. That, or he feared what Hevlaska might find._

The words suddenly grew sharp, cutting against the burning white backdrop of the page. Tyki closed his eyes to its blinding glare.

He opened them to another reality – one of unnaturally intense saturation, sound, _everything_.

He was sitting on the bridge at the top of the Order's central elevator shaft, staring up at the massive, glowing form of what had to be Hevlaska. The Earl's account had been off in its description of an enormous tentacled ghost, because this being shone with opalescent brilliance. Facets of color that Tyki could not quite name shifted and shimmered across her vaguely translucent body. He was forced to blink away.

Komui stood to Tyki's right, reeking of stale coffee, while Bookman and Lavi remained transfixed on Hevlaska. Tyki forced his strained eyes back up and honed in on Lavi's un-weaponized Innocence in the grip of the guardian of all Innocence.

" _Your true strength,"_ Hevlaska said, her words booming around them _, "lies dormant. This Innocence carries what its wielder lacks, but must be tempered in adversity."_ With that, she returned the Innocence to Lavi, who reclaimed it with casual indifference.

"Hmph," the Bookman scoffed. "I suppose it carries a sense of urgency. This one could certainly use a bit of that." He jerked a thumb at Lavi, who just pasted on a comically wide grin.

"Whatever you say, old panda. Maybe my Innocence is just a wet blanket."

Komui and Lavi both had a good laugh about that, while Bookman remained a statue of disapproval. But Tyki, the unwitting bystander, could tell there was something more to this exchange. He felt a profound unease radiating from Lavi and a weaker echo of fear from Bookman – he could only assume that Lavi had picked up on his master's feelings.

Still, it was hard for Tyki to imagine the calm and collected Bookman being afraid of such a generic prediction. He got the sense that the master knew precisely what his apprentice lacked, and it wasn't a sense of urgency. The stifled discomfort surrounding Lavi was so strong that Tyki could taste it. He looked at the redhead, and for a split second their eyes met.

" _You don't belong here."_

The whisper from before became clearer in its repellence, and its speaker was now obvious. Beyond that, the world around him began to shift. Lavi's face stayed in position, though it matured a bit, and his clothing and hairstyle changed to suit a different time and place.

Tyki braced himself against a wall in the location forming around them. Hevlaska's chamber had fully melted away to reveal a plain bedroom. Lavi stood against a wall opposite Tyki, Komui sat beside the bed, and Allen lay asleep on the covers with a bandaged eye among other dressed injuries. As in the previous memory, the colors of the mundane space were intensely saturated, the sunlight coming in the window creating an angelic glow around Allen's hair. Even his shallow breathing was audible. The cry of a distant bird pierced the silence.

It struck Tyki that this sensory overload was likely the effect of Bookmen having sharper senses and more vivid recall. And it seemed even more so whenever Lavi chose to focus on anything in particular. _His_ focus, after all, determined what details he retained.

"You say his left eye can see akuma souls?" Lavi asked, and Komui nodded. "Sounds convenient. Though I've gotta wonder how he got that eye in the first place."

"Ask him yourself, then," Komui offered, "but tread lightly. Being cursed is never a pleasant experience."

Lavi appeared to be composed on the surface as they made idle chitchat, but he was barely listening or recording the content of what Komui said, to the point that entire portions of the conversation were muted out.

Tyki thought he might have to do a very undignified dance under the emotions emanating from the memory. The sense of curiosity was so palpable it crawled over his skin and made him physically itch, to the point that he crossed his arms tightly to avoid scratching.

Lavi was impatient. He couldn't exactly wake Allen up to begin the conversation.

He did not meet Tyki's gaze a second time – he was too distracted, probably mulling over his many questions for the strange new Exorcist. Allen's silvery hair was blinding Tyki, and he braced himself again as the entire world of that memory began burning back to white.

That was the last thing he saw before flying backward against a hard shelf. He had been repelled again. His impact jostled a few volumes loose, which tumbled onto his head.

"Ugh, fucking bookworm." Tyki rubbed at the tender spots where he had been bombarded and dragged himself off the floor. He was about halfway down the shelf now, having exited from a completely different book than the one he'd started from.

With a growl of annoyance, he closed his eyes again, honing in on the strongest energy signature he could sense nearby. Oddly, he recognized which book he'd just exited, and he disregarded that one. The next was on a shelf near the ground.

Tyki's hand found the spine without even reading the title. He opened it to a halfway point and began reading.

_I never would have seen it coming_ , he read, trying to gather context after having skipped half the volume. _Crowley was naïve and harmless, if a little more so than the typical new Exorcist, while Allen was getting more and more complicated._

The page's blinding effect happened again, carrying with it a sense of foreboding – a tingling that set in at the base of his neck for no clear reason. Tyki opened his eyes to the inside of a cold cargo compartment in a noisy train, made all the louder and chillier by Lavi's amplified senses.

Tyki made a quick scan of the car's occupants. His exorcism scars throbbed at the sight of his human self – a hit to the chest that had him grabbing his shirt on impulse. Vagabond Tyki was in nothing but his boxers and swirled glasses by that point, playing a losing round of poker with two work buddies from a past he hazily remembered.

"Royal straight flush?!" Another shock travelled over his wounds when he _heard_ himself, speaking in unison with his friends. Tyki forced himself to focus elsewhere.

Allen was grinning like the most angelic fiend in creation, and Crowley gave a shivering sigh of relief, but Lavi…

Lavi radiated emotion, warming the space like a hearth. He acted the usual part, protesting and questioning Allen's latent skills as a poker shark, but that performance was a ruse. His focus was solely on Allen, both calculating and openly intrigued.

The Noah had to remind himself that none of the present company could have felt Lavi's inner reactions in real time, or they all would have wondered at the sudden warmth and subsequent sensation of ash collapsing onto the metaphorical fire. The sequence of feelings was hard to sort out – curiosity, concern, admiration and a heavy dose of self-repression. Other than the fact of Walker's impressive cheating technique, Tyki could not wrap his mind around the reasons behind Lavi's response.

Tyki barely had a chance to refocus as Lavi averted his gaze to the cards on the floor – Allen's final winning hand – when a sudden cold front washed over the memory. Everything around them swirled into a tornado of color and sound, its hues losing saturation as a new scene began to take shape.

Tyki clamped his hands over his ears until the roaring noise began to fade, watching the landscape form. They were in a dark forest, faintly lit with watery shafts of dawn.

Like on the train, he knew this place – it was the scene of Allen's death, or what _should_ have been his death. Tyki looked down at the dark bloodstain on the leaf-laden ground, its stench stronger than he would have believed possible, and then he looked up at Lavi.

His tense, stoic expression was a carbon copy of what it had been in the moment they left the train memory – the moment he had focused on those cards. Here and now, the redhead's hand found the ace of spades on the ground. He knew the card for what it was.

Lavi's jaw tightened and he held his breath. He let the sound of his own heartbeat fill his awareness and the entire space. Lenalee sobbed into her hands nearby, but her cries were drowned in the pounding pulse.

Then, everything stopped. The air in that forest was suddenly plunged into a vacuum, making Tyki gasp for breath. A crushing despair bore down on him, emanating from Lavi with a force that resembled the Earl's dark matter attacks. Tyki collapsed to his knees, clawing at the pain in his chest and fearing that he might be buried in something as ridiculous as a memory.

For a split second, Lavi's eye flickered in Tyki's direction, as if he had heard the disturbance, before his eye refocused on the ace. The silence was deafening and Tyki's vision was fading, but he saw Lavi place the card in his coat pocket before his sight gave out.

It was in total darkness, and with a painful gasp of _different_ air, that Tyki realized the memory had shifted. He sat up with a start, wondering if he'd been kicked out of the library entirely.

Something about the place, though… It felt familiar.

Tyki sat in the darkness for a long few moments before he pinpointed the feeling. It was the detached sensation of Road's dreams. Tyki vaguely recalled that Lavi had once allowed his mind to be her playground for the sake of his friends in the Ark – he guessed this must be a memory of that time.

Distantly, he heard a shout, the slicing of flesh and the splashing of water. Tyki crawled toward the sound until he saw a halo of light, and in its center, the apprentice Bookman emerging from what must have been the fight of his life. He reeked of fear and uncertainty, panting as he sloshed through a vague region of water in this dreamscape. He held a bloody knife in one hand, and his clothes were completely different – old fashioned, rough-hewn and foreign.

The redhead stopped abruptly, as Allen Walker materialized from nowhere. Whoever this version of Bookman Junior was, he clearly recognized Allen and the reaction was instantaneous. He was petrified with shock, suspended between the despair of bloodstained leaves and a helplessness to look away. His heartbeat was deafening.

Allen held the ace of spades.

Tyki could not make out Allen's words, his ears ringing after the sonic boom of emotion from what had to be Lavi, but he certainly heard Allen's cry when yet _another_ version of the redhead showed up and activated his fire seal, scorching the boy to death.

Allen's charred hand still held the ace above his twisted corpse. Lavi froze in speechless agony, but he might as well have been screaming at the top of his lungs. Tyki slapped his hands over his ears, forced to shut his eyes from the pain reverberating in his head.

Perhaps this was what Lavi had felt when his mind broke.

The darkness remained when Tyki opened his eyes next, though it took on a hazy, grayish cast. He couldn't see anything at all, but he heard coughing, labored breathing, the stuttering thud of a heartbeat.

The air was clogged with ash. He was getting used to the feel of memories shifting, so he knew this was not the same location as before. He could not place it, though.

"Why, Allen?" Lavi's voice cracked through the silence. "Why didn't you let me just…?"

"Destroy yourself?" Allen coughed again, then sighed. "You know why. That wasn't you."

"Not the version of me I wanna be, anyway," Lavi sniffed. He took a labored breath and nearly hacked up a lung. "Heartless asshole…"

Allen choked out a laugh, shifting with a rustle of clothing. "That's _not_ you, idiot."

"I'm sorry," Lavi rasped, his voice muffled as if buried against fabric.

There was a small, soft whisper, but it was so clear that it had to have been spoken directly at Lavi's ear. "Don't be."

After that, Tyki heard another series of shuffling noises, followed by the pounding of limbs or fists against a surface. A different pressure had also been building in the space – the force of overwhelming relief, even joy. In such close quarters, it was enough to send Tyki hurtling away from the memory, even as the two Exorcists broke through whatever shell had contained them for those precious few moments.

He glimpsed the light of the outside world only for it to transform into the walls of an infamous, stark white room. Though he had never been inside it, Tyki easily recognized the piano room of the Fourteenth – the Earl had certainly ranted about it enough. In Lavi's memory, its every detail stood out in sharp relief. It was a wonder Lavi wasn't blinded by the room itself.

Allen sat hunched up on the piano bench, idly toying with the keys. A bag heaped with food sat nearby. His golden golem munched freely on the untouched snacks.

Lavi stood just inside the door. He leaned against the wall, hands in his pockets, and observed the boy at the piano in silence.

Allen pressed a middle C, and the door closed. "So… you found the entrance."

"More like you made me a door with a neon sign," Lavi laughed. The sound fell flat.

Tyki resisted the urge to try and make himself permeable just to find some relief from the suffocating tension. A cigarette would have done the trick just as well, but he feared the smell might draw attention.

"They hate me," Allen whispered. It was the loudest whisper in existence, through the filter of Lavi's memory. "Maybe not Lenalee or Crowley or Miranda – maybe not even Kanda. But everyone else…"

"Fuck everyone else."

Lavi's words hit the air like a stone breaking a window. Allen straightened abruptly, his silver eyes wide. Tyki gave his head a quick shake – he honestly wasn't sure he'd heard right. Even the rapid fluttering of Timcanpy's wings betrayed something like surprise, the sound unnaturally loud in the dead silence.

"You know I can't think like that," Allen replied. He slowly turned on the bench, resting his chin on his knees. "I can't tune them out. And I can't just stop caring."

Lavi cracked a small, humorless smile. "I could teach you all about how to stop caring, if you want. Bookman 101."

"But our friends— I mean, you _do_ care…" Allen fumbled. "Don't you?"

"Well, the thing is, I _can_ beat that caring reflex into submission, if I want," Lavi said, pressing a hand to his chest. "Saves me a ton of heartache. I just choose not to, sometimes."

Lavi cleared his throat, rubbing at the back of his head. "Or a lot of times, lately."

"You're a terrible apprentice, aren't you?" Allen asked, swallowing his laughter.

Lavi fired back, "Didn't Cross call you an idiot apprentice, too?"

"Don't mention that scoundrel in my safe space!"

"Safe space?" Lavi cocked his head to one side. "Safe like a padded room, maybe. Kinda gives me the creeps."

Allen nailed him with a dead stare. "Guess that explains why you've practically got one foot out the door. You didn't _have_ to wander around the Ark for an hour looking for a way into this padded room, you know."

"But my favorite research subject was hiding in here!" Lavi protested. He clasped his hands over his heart in a dramatic gesture. "I had no choice."

"I'm not a research subject," Allen growled, blushing in spite of his harsh tone. "And you'd better not be keeping logs about me. If you are, I'll find your nerdy archivist stash and burn it. Then you'll cry all over your new logs until the ink bleeds, and then you'll have to rewrite them, so your back will go out. And you'll _never write logs about Allen again_. The end."

Lavi burst out laughing so hard that he had to hold his sides as they shook. He swiped at his uncovered eye with the heel of his hand, calming the fit over a few deep breaths. Even Allen finally chuckled a bit.

"God," Lavi breathed. "I've missed you, Al."

The tension surged like water through a burst dam. Tyki thought he might drown in it. He felt his throat constricting, but he braced himself against the wall, trying to focus on the way Allen's reluctant humor had faded to the initial state of gloom.

"I'm sorry. I needed a quiet place to think about… everything." Allen took a deep breath and let it go. "Lavi, there really is something wrong with me."

"Hey, don't think like that—"

"There is something _wrong_ inside me," Allen insisted, his voice almost pleading. "It's there. It's _real_. I've tried to ignore it, but I just… I just— _can't_!" He slammed one hand on several errant keys at once, filling the room with jarring discord.

Tyki felt a faint tremor rattle the Ark.

In a few quick strides, Lavi crossed the room to the bench. He clamped his hands on the smaller boy's shoulders, looking him in the eye with a frightening intensity.

The fear swimming in the room, Tyki realized, was even more potent than some of Lavi's more chilling memories – it was a fear complemented by resolve. He could tell that Lavi _knew_ Allen was right. But he had no intention of standing idly by.

"We'll figure it out," Lavi declared. "We survived the Ark, Edo, and— and everything before that. We're gonna live through this, too, whatever it is. Got it?"

Allen nodded, his still-wide eyes going misty. He pushed Lavi's hands away and kneeled on the bench to embrace him instead, clinging for dear life. Lavi startled at first but returned the hug in a heartbeat. He tightened his hold as if he were afraid to allow any hint of separation. Afraid to let go.

It would have been a touching moment, had Tyki not been struggling to breathe through an emotional deluge. As his focus wavered, beating back against the heavy atmosphere, he caught a glimpse of Lavi's eye over Allen's shoulder as it reflected in the room's strange window panes.

Lavi's gaze met Tyki's. His single green eye blazed with pure repulsion. A raw and furious heat surrounded Tyki, and he heard the voice once again.

This time, it screamed, " _GET OUT!"_

In that instant, he was catapulted away from the white room.

Tyki did not feel the shelf hit his back this time. Instead, he opened his eyes to a far more terrifying sight. He stood in front of the dreaded mirror at the end of the row.

Lavi's dark form, not his own reflection, faced him there.

" _You have violated the confidential recordings of the Bookman, Junior,"_ he said, his voice amplified 48-fold as all his previous selves sentenced Tyki in unison from the row of mirrors. Lavi extended his hand – a gesture very much at odds with his cold gaze.

" _Leave, or perish."_

Tyki shuddered at the thought of taking that hand. However, it was sounding more like the better alternative. The air in the room suddenly whooshed toward the front of the library, rattling chains in a cacophony of metallic noise. Seconds later, the roar and heat of a massive blaze crackled to life behind Tyki. He was too petrified to turn around, as the mirror reflected a sight more chilling than the spectre of Lavi within.

Forty-nine torches and innumerable chains were combining into an infernal guardian beast.

Bloody red light flooded the room. A molten dragon, covered in shifting chains like rings on the bowels of hell, coiled itself above the library. Its blazing eyes scanned the shelves until they fixed on Tyki.

Its mouth pulled into a snarl. Chain-links rattled as as it raised its head to strike.

Tyki was no fool. He thrust his hand into the mirror and let the dark reflection of Lavi pull him into the unknown.

* * *

If Tyki could have described this most recent "rapid transportation" experience, he would have compared it to being forcefully sucked through an Ark gate. No sooner had he entered the mirror in the library did he go flying out an "other" side, his palms and knees skidding on carpet as he caught himself.

Tyki did not move, awkward as it was to remain on all fours on what he now recognized as the foyer's ornate rug. He currently faced the scroll-laden table – he could assume the cracked mirror that was no doubt behind him had been an exit point.

And he _felt_ the heat of the door. It was unnerving to even turn his head to the left, where he knew the library's entrance to be, but he gulped and faced it.

The doors were closed. The handle of Lavi's hammer still protruded from the dragon's mouth, though, locked stubbornly in place – no doubt the reason Wisely had not ceased his connection to Lavi's mind and saved Tyki from this hell.

However, the dragon's head fixture around the hammer glowed an angry red. Tyki got the sense that time was running out.

He was beyond relieved.

Tyki scrambled to his feet, not willing to wait for whatever obscene fate to befall him once Wisely retracted the hammer. Best case, he would simply wake up in a dank, rancid cell and maybe – just maybe – rough up their prisoner a bit for all his nasty mental traps.

Worst case, a fiery chain-clad dragon would fly through the doors and devour him.

Tyki pulled a cigarette and match from his coat pocket, brushing errant dirt from his pants.

Lighting the cigarette, Tyki bitterly thought, _Fuck this place_.

No sooner had he turned, confirming that, yes, the broken mirror had been his point of exit, did Tyki startle again and nearly drop his cigarette.

"Who are you?"

The mirror _spoke_.

After a brief moment of shock, Tyki cautiously approached. He peered into the dark, broken glass until he was looking into the face of a small, redheaded boy with an eyepatch over his right eye.

Tyki blew out a shaky puff of smoke. Lying didn't seem like a good idea.

"Tyki Mykk, or Joyd – depends on the situation."

The boy in the mirror closed his one eye for a few moments, seeming to mull that over.

"You are an acquaintance of the forty-ninth persona," he stated. "Why are you here?"

Now that would be a touchy answer. Tyki wondered just what sort of judgment he might receive from this young spectre for his intrusion, unexpected as it was to be labeled "acquaintance" rather than "enemy," but he was more interested in why this persona existed outside the library proper.

"I'm looking for secrets," he said, shrugging. "Why are _you_ here? Outside the library?"

The boy tilted his head, puzzled. "I am not a persona of the Bookman apprentice."

"Then who are you?" Tyki asked.

The boy frowned like he had never considered such a question before. After a long pause, he answered, "I am what you might call the original. There is nowhere left for me but this antechamber. No one seeks my meager collection of knowledge."

He pointed past Tyki to the cluttered and cobwebbed table of scrolls.

"Am I… free to read those?" Tyki ventured. "What language are they written in?"

"They did not require a logging mechanism. They are purely sensory recordings."

Tyki took another drag on his cigarette, breathing out the question, "Is that a yes?"

The boy nodded. "Be warned, though. These recordings are not filtered for consumption. You might find the experience to be unpleasant."

"No more unpleasant than anything I've seen so far," Tyki muttered around the cigarette in his mouth. "But thanks anyway."

He bowed slightly to the nameless boy and turned on his heel.

Not two paces from the table, Tyki stopped short, grabbing his chest reflexively. Waves of mixed energy seemed to be pulsing out of the scrolls.

This was not a good start.

Still, he refused to leave this metaphorical stone unturned. He pushed on to the stack and brushed the thick layers of dust and cobweb aside, going for a scroll at the bottom left – one that seemed older than the others. It radiated a sense of pain, and his hand felt vibrations as it wrapped around the parchment.

Tyki unrolled the scroll with a small gasp, wincing at the sight. It held a vivid spread of color splashes, something that might have been an abstract painting had the colors not been so surreal. They became impossibly bright, the longer he looked, until they eventually bled to white, and Tyki was once again transported into memory.

Blinding color burst and streaked across the night sky. A loud series of _booms_ knocked Tyki on his rear end, the earth-shattering noise leaving him practically deaf. His ears rang, but somehow he registered the piercing wail of a small child – a toddler, in fact.

The grubby, redheaded boy sat huddled in the doorway of what looked – and certainly _smelled_ – like a back alley establishment of the slums. He cried at the top of his lungs, one hand pressed against his right eye as if it were a gushing wound while the other hand covered his left ear.

Sounds of celebration and voices vaguely drifted into the alley. The child stood, making a pitiful attempt to stumble away from the source of pain, but the concussive force of another round of fireworks seemed to knock him over from behind.

His head hit the cobblestones, and Tyki was abruptly ejected from the scene.

"Ugh…" Tyki groaned. He was unable to curse, or even get up from the floor for a full minute at least. He lay on his back, wondering if his head might split. If this was what it meant to encounter Lavi's unfiltered memories – or whoever's they were – he wasn't sure how much he could take.

Only through dogged determination did he finally stand. Tyki rubbed at his temples, smoked another entire cigarette, and eyed the remaining twenty or so scrolls with disdain. At least one of them had to contain a worthwhile secret.

He could not endure much more.

To make matters worse, or perhaps better, a creaking noise from the door sounded an alarm that time was ticking down. The hammer seemed to be turning – its handle wobbled slightly in place.

Tyki scanned the stacks again, his hand hovering over a few different scrolls, before he finally snatched one just shy of the far right.

It was hard to say why he'd chosen it. The aura from it felt familiar, but repellent.

He slowly unfurled the parchment.

Intense blue-green light pierced Tyki's eyes, which had gone wider in spite of the abuse. It was, without a doubt, an image of raw Innocence.

After the expected trip through the white void, Tyki opened his eyes to the inside of a cramped, shabby living space. He was a tad disturbed to hear and smell – with alarming sharpness – the evidence of illicit activity going on behind a nearby door. Not because that sort of thing was anything new to Tyki, but because he knew this was recorded in the memory of a child.

Said redheaded child, now a scrawny boy of five or so, crept into view from an entryway behind Tyki. He seemed unfazed by what was going on in the closed room. Instead, he made his way with slow, careful steps across the wooden floorboards toward a black Exorcist's coat hanging on the doorknob.

It was then that Tyki noticed the static in the air – an electricity that twisted his guts in revulsion, growing stronger the closer the boy came to that coat.

The boy knelt there, reached his small fingers inside the dark fabric, and pulled his hand back with a quiet breath of triumph.

He cradled the object in his hands. The Innocence glowed like a small sun, its energy pulsing in sync with the beat of his heart.

Scuffling noises barely announced trouble before the door flung open, and the boy scrambled backward in panic. Tyki could hardly believe his eyes when the infamous figure of Cross Marian emerged, staggering out of the room and backing the small boy into a corner.

"Curious little shit, aren't you?" he said, but the words were not malicious. He narrowed his visible eye at the Innocence filched from his uniform coat. The boy glared back with his one eye in return. He shoved the Innocence down the front of his ragged shirt and bolted past Tyki through the open doorway, just out of Cross's sight.

Tyki, though not an expert, knew a thing or two about Innocence and its accommodators. It was not going back inside that coat. Not now. He turned his attention over his shoulder, watching for a moment as the boy squatting outside pulled the Innocence from his shirt again, his green eye transfixed on the power in his grasp.

He put the object away just as quickly, moving to spy around the edge of the doorway. Tyki followed the boy's gaze back inside.

A dark-haired woman, barely covered in a sad excuse for a robe, came into view from the bedroom and leaned lazily against the doorframe. She looked nothing like the boy – Tyki surmised she might be a temporary caretaker, or just a common whore whose quarters the boy frequented for shelter and food.

She laughed darkly and raised an eyebrow at Cross. "Curious, huh? Can't imagine where he gets _that_ from, Marian."

"Bad manners aren't genetic," Cross muttered. "Don't blame me for the brat's pitiful upbringing here."

The pieces clicked into place. Tyki barely collected his jaw from the floor before the memory went black like the end of a film reel. He was left standing before the scrolls once more, unable to stop replaying the facts of the encounter in his head.

Cross Marian was more than an enigma. He was more than Allen Walker's master, or the elusive long-time scourge on the Earl's most well-laid plans.

He was the Bookman Junior's _father_.

And his apprentice was the Bookman Junior's weakness. Not that Tyki hadn't suspected as much before, but his encounter with Lavi's memories proved that Allen Walker was on a level beyond his small group of forbidden attachments.

Two of the Earl's greatest threats were both intimately tied to their prisoner.

What Tyki wanted to do with that information, though… That remained to be seen.

Perhaps he would just follow his gut.

Now, his gut was saying it was truly time to _get out_. The foyer area had begun to vibrate. He looked to the door, where the heat of the dragon's head had spread to the hammer within, to the point that the handle glowed like a hot poker.

A grating noise and a loud _clang_ reverberated in the room. The hammer was spat out, landing with a dull, smoking thud on the decorative rug, and the dragon's head began to fade back to its original gold.

Tyki watched the hammer. He didn't understand why it hadn't flown back into the dark nothingness. It lay on the rug, slowly shrinking back down to gavel size.

Curiosity got the better of him. He strode to the rug and picked up the hammer.

A faint energy pulsed in his palm. It was different than the usual aura he felt from Innocence, and he had held a number of them. They registered this same energy to varying degrees, like radioactive material, but their signatures were constant. Stable.

It was possible that this Innocence still might not have reached its potential, as Hevlaska had stated in Lavi's memories. Tyki had never destroyed the Innocence of a novice Exorcist before – but honestly, the apprentice Bookman was no novice. His Innocence did not seem terribly underdeveloped. Not on par with Walker's fully realized Crown Clown, of course, but only a handful of Innocence could compare to that.

Movement at the edge of Tyki's vision interrupted his thoughts. He looked up, only to see the image of the boy in the mirror take a small bow and disappear, a silent farewell. Tyki turned, facing down the doors again.

The dragon's mouth snapped shut.

* * *

Tyki came to in the dim light and stench of the cell. His head was throbbing. For a long few moments he sat very still, unwilling to open his eyes more than a fraction against even the wan torchlight. It took a great deal of effort for him to decide that a cigarette was merited, and when he started to lift his right hand, he felt the weight of an object.

The hammer had stayed with him.

"Nnnng…" Wisely groaned, obviously in a similar condition across the cell. "I can't move. Those god-awful _doors_ …"

The entire state of affairs was ridiculous. Tyki managed to procure his cigarette and smuggle the hammer away in his jacket pocket, but neither of them made further progress for another twenty minutes – three cigarettes later.

Tyki mustered the strength to get up, drag the moaning lump that was Wisely from the cell, and get both of them seated in his study once more. He kept the fireplace at its state of glowing embers, procured two ice packs, and made a small pot of tea. It was something of a temporary truce. Wisely would not be reading his mind any time soon, and light was their common enemy.

"How do you feel about migraines _now_?" Wisely croaked. He glared dully across the table, then took a sip of his tea and cleared his throat. "Not all fun and games, is it?"

Tyki set down his teacup. "Point taken. I might cut you some slack if you stay out of my head from now on. Deal?"

"Deal," Wisely agreed. "Did you at least find some interesting information in there?"

Tyki shrugged, taking another sip of tea and contemplating how much he should disclose. He didn't care for Sheril or his overprotective, Road-centric and potentially treacherous agenda, and Wisely would report any information back to him. Tyki hadn't made up his mind about the Fourteenth, but his loyalties were still to the Earl.

The Earl sought the Fourteenth. The Fourteenth had ties to both Bookman and Cross.

And now, Tyki knew that the Bookman's apprentice had significant ties to Cross and the Fourteenth's vessel.

Tyki opted to play his cards close to his chest.

"Not much to report," he said. "Kid's not shaping up to be a good Bookman, but he's definitely good bait."

Wisely tilted his head. "Explain."

"Allen Walker," Tyki elaborated, taking another sip. "We've been after him for a long time, and I know his MO. He'd go to hell and back for his Exorcist pals. Set up this bait, and I'm willing to bet he'll come right to us."

"You're not serious," Wisely scoffed. "He's been on the run for months, even from his friends, so he probably doesn't know we abducted the Bookman and his apprentice. The Order hasn't made one move in pursuit of them, either – maybe because it's a lost cause, or perhaps the Order is _finally_ acknowledging them as a neutral party. What makes you so sure a trap like this would work for Walker?"

"I have my areas of expertise." Tyki cracked a sly smile in spite of his headache. "I think this _Lavi_ is a little more than Walker's friend. So I'm suggesting we up the stakes."

Wisely made a face, then shook his head in disappointment, as if he'd expected better. He lifted one hand to rub circles on his temple.

"Spare me the details."


	2. The Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This chapter brought to you by panaili (aka Beta-roomie) ^_^ A couple of small notes about our choices here and throughout: First, we have gone with the translation of "Alistair Crowley" as our preference for that Exorcist's name (despite prevailing/canonical usage being Arystar Krory, which is less an actual name), and we have gone with "Chaoji" for that Exorcist's name (which better aligns with Chinese characters/pinyin and the original pronunciation, vice Chaozi).

The Dreams

_At first, Allen thinks it's a normal dream._

_He's in the white room, seated at the piano and staring down at its black and white keys with a pensive set to his shoulders. He's frozen in the glare of light from the glossy surface of the piano. There's a headache forming at the base of his skull._

_It takes a moment for him to realize that there are voices around him. Multiple voices, talking with different speeds and patterns, layering over each other like endless waves on the ocean. He can scarcely follow one conversation before another takes over, pulling his focus to and fro._

_It reminds him of his first encounter using the Ark, standing in this very spot, exhausted and mystified and hearing Lavi call out from nowhere. But this isn't just one voice. There are many people in the Ark now._

_Somehow, he's observing them all. The knowledge sits unbidden in the back of his mind, alongside his growing collection of errant memories. He feels restless in his bones, paranoia creeping through his limbs until his skin hangs off him like an ill-fitting suit._

_The headache throbs in his neck and Allen gets up with a heavy sigh. But it's not his voice. His body seems taller, heavier—_

_The voices abruptly shut off._

_Allen walks out of the piano room, following an unspoken path along the winding roads of the Ark. Some of the places are unfamiliar, but he walks with the ease of a native, never slowing._

_It's only once he comes to a crossway that he changes pace, stepping carefully to the intersection. He can hear a pair of voices arguing just around the corner._

"— _not our role to come up with solutions," a low voice counsels. It strikes Allen with its familiarity, both sharp and guiding at the same time._

" _Right, we stand idly by," another voice counters, annoyed and gruff. It's also familiar but somehow wrong. Out of place. Allen can't quite put his finger on it, feeling like he's trying to see through a distorted image._

" _You know full well what I mean," the first speaker replies, an air of fond frustration in his voice. Allen nearly reels in shock, recognizing the lecturing tone as he finally steps forward to view the pair._

_Bookman stares back at him, face set in a familiar taciturn expression. He looks younger than the last time Allen saw him, radiating a distinct air of power despite his small size, dark makeup firmly set around his eyes. He doesn't look as wizened as Allen remembers, like his wrinkles haven't had the time to properly line his face._

_His conversation partner is looking away from Allen, standing tall and broad-shouldered against the wall. Allen sees red hair and thinks — Lavi? — but the hair is too long, stance too rigid—_

_The man turns to face him, a familiar black eyepatch covering his right eye, but Allen finds himself staring back at Cross Marian in stunned silence._

_He's younger, clean-shaven and watching Allen with a bright-eyed interest that Allen has never seen directed toward him before, but it's undeniably his master._

" _What do you need, Nea?" Bookman asks, adopting the same neutral tone Allen can remember from countless reports._

_Allen opens his mouth, words on the tip of his tongue, and—_

Allen shot awake, breath stuck in his throat.

It was dark. For a long moment, Allen just stared at nothing, the images from his dreams still clear in his mind. It was the second time he'd seen Cross in his dreams, like a nagging thought that kept popping up without intent. He hadn't spoken to Allen this time, but just remembering the keen look in his eyes made Allen feel pinned to a board.

The carriage jerked suddenly, rattling as it crossed over a bumpy road, and Allen nearly gasped in shock, restarting his breathing without fully realizing he'd stopped.

"You're safe," a cold voice assured him from nearby.

Allen looked up. There was just enough dim moonlight streaming in from the front of the carriage to see Kanda sitting across from him, leaning against the wall and watching him with a narrow-eyed expression. From anyone but Kanda, it would have been a glare.

Johnny was curled up on the floor beside Kanda, sleeping against his lumpy bag and snoring faintly. As Allen regained his bearings, memories flooded his mind: waking up to find Johnny leaning over him before Tyki appeared without warning—Kanda arriving to fight him off—getting trapped in a prison of Innocence while fleeing a town filled with Finders—

He took a deep breath, panic settling to manageable levels. If he focused, he could just make out General Tiedoll through the small gap in the carriage curtains. The sky behind him was littered with stars.

"How long has it been?" Allen finally asked. His voice sounded weak to his ears.

"A few hours," Kanda replied, glancing away and staring out at the sliver of night sky. "We're mostly clear of the town now. I kept watch for awhile, but no one followed us."

Allen frowned, registering their escape with secondary notice. He stared down at his hands. They stayed steady, not repeating his earlier vertigo, but Allen didn't trust it. Quietly, he said, "But I— when I was out, I didn't—"

He couldn't bring himself to finish. Shame curdled in his heart at the thought of asking, _Did I hurt anyone? Did the Noah emerge again?_

Kanda turned back to him, face impassive. When Allen didn't continue, he responded, "You just slept."

Allen sighed, feeling unnoticed tension seep from his shoulders.

"Can you not tell?" Kanda asked, frowning.

"It's not always obvious," Allen answered after a moment. "It feels like I'm sleeping either way, only when the Fourteenth comes out, I wake up missing a lot more time."

A small part of him boggled at talking about this with Kanda of all people, memories of their constant fights whirling in his brain, but their time together as Exorcists had done more to cement a bond than Allen realized. He longed to speak with Lenalee or Lavi, aching for their respective brands of comfort, but Kanda's cool regard was strangely reassuring in its own way. He latched onto its familiarity like a drowning man to a life raft.

"Hn," Kanda said. He stared at Allen for a moment longer, waiting to see if there was more, but didn't seem inclined to question him further. After a pause, he said, "We're heading to that mansion you were talking about. If it's where you think it is, it'll only take a few days, but Tiedoll is going to need to sleep eventually. We'll have to hide if we don't want the Order coming down on us."

"I thought they were searching in the town," Allen replied, frowning.

"Most of them, yeah," Kanda said. "But the Order knows you were there. They're going to have people circling the entire area. Including Crowley and Chaoji, once they get there."

The idea of his fellow Exorcists hunting him down felt like a stone in his stomach. Just knowing Crowley and Chaoji were involved made him queasy, but Allen could scarcely imagine having to fight Lenalee, the memory of her parting tears still fresh in his mind. He hadn't even gotten the chance to say goodbye to Lavi. Neither Lenalee nor Lavi had the freedom to ignore the Order like Kanda had, beholden to Komui and the Bookman respectively. It was entirely possible that they had been pressed into the search.

And they were only the friends who were closest to him. Allen ran through the list of Exorcists that the Order could send after him, each one a friend in their own right, and he despaired at having to fight any of them.

"Did they—," Allen began, feeling like his voice was about to break. "Did they send anyone else to this region?"

 _Don't say Lenalee_ , he pleaded silently. _Don't say Lavi_. _Don't—_

"Just Crowley and Chaoji, last I knew," Kanda murmured. "And Tiedoll, of course, but he's obviously not a threat. I don't know if they've sent any new teams since I left, though. They were stretched pretty thin."

Part of Allen wanted to ask more, ceaseless little worries racing around his mind. If Crowley was with Chaoji and Kanda on his own, did that mean Lenalee and Lavi were working together? It was a comforting thought: they were an effective team, and Lavi was scarcely without the Bookman, adding even more power to their defense.

Maybe they were safe together, far away from the deteriorating Noah situation. The thought made Allen breathe a little easier. It was easier to imagine Lavi and Lenalee taking care of each other, making the worry twisting in his heart hurt a little less.

He swallowed back the question on his tongue, preferring ignorance in this particular case. Instead, Allen said, "Hopefully they stick to the town long enough for us to get a lead."

There was nothing more to add. Allen could only hope his estimation of the mansion's location was accurate enough to hasten their arrival, but he was working off a scattered handful of broken memories. The longer they were on the road, the riskier their quest would become.

Kanda seemed to agree, falling silent and staring back out at the stars.

It struck Allen that this might have been the longest conversation he'd ever had with Kanda that didn't result in a fight at the end, but he couldn't take any joy in it when the rest of his life felt like it was crumbling down around him.

* * *

Though he tried, Allen wasn't able to find sleep again that night. He passed the time in a daze, ostensibly watching over Kanda and Johnny as they slept but really just staring blankly at the carriage wall. His mind was too alert for the exhaustion of his body.

He held the jar containing Timcanpy's ashes in his grip, rotating the glass and watching the dust move gently back and forth in the dim moonlight. It didn't yet feel real that he was gone. The pain was hot in his throat, but some dark part of Allen stopped any tears from forming, as though he subconsciously knew that if he started to cry he'd never stop.

Everything was a mess.

He thought he'd been doing a good job at hiding these past few months. Training with his master had taught him well how to stay off the radar, and he'd managed to keep the Fourteenth from showing up anywhere but his dreams. It had been hard, but he'd been _handling it_.

And then, like a gust of wind at a house of cards, it all took scarcely any time to come toppling down.

 _It's not that bad_ , Allen tried to reason, steeling himself against the gnawing worry in his chest. _You're heading to the mansion, just like you wanted. There'll be answers there. Something that might be able to help—_

But even the scattered images of the mansion were nothing more than fragmented memories from another life.

Allen frowned, watching Timcanpy's ashes dust the edges of the jar. He tried to recall his most recent dream, where a younger Cross stood with the Bookman, almost certainly talking to the Fourteenth.

 _Nea_ , the Bookman had said. The same name from his memories of the mansion.

The same name the Fourteenth himself had used.

It must have been another memory. Allen knew that Cross had been involved with the Fourteenth, in as much as _anyone_ knew about it. His master's past was wrapped with so many veils of secrecy that Allen hardly thought anything would surprise him. And even though Lavi hadn't known many details, he had told Allen that Bookman had previously traveled with the Noah, right around the time of the Fourteenth's betrayal. It made sense that Cross and the Bookman would have crossed paths.

Yet, the pairing struck Allen as odd. He couldn't remember the two ever speaking. Even after they returned from the Ark, impossibly alive with a mysteriously acquired General Cross in tow, the Bookman hadn't batted an eye in the man's direction. And he'd sent Lavi to listen to Cross's testimony alone, despite it directly dealing with the emergence of the Fourteenth—something that Allen would imagine the Bookman being very interested in. The omission hadn't struck Allen as strange at the time, too focused on his own surprising role in the whole ordeal, but the Fourteenth's new memory cast the discrepancy into sharp relief.

Allen turned the thought over in his mind, collecting the tiny pile of memories he'd gleaned from the Fourteenth and trying to piece them into a coherent story. It crumbled almost immediately, with too many gaps to hold its shape.

He sighed in annoyance, abandoning the entire line of thinking. It felt as pointless as the search for Cross had been, like trying to find a handful of needles in an endless haystack. It brought about little more than frustration.

Worse, the thoughts of Bookman only made him miss Lavi more. Allen knew his friend's presence wouldn't have changed his choice to leave the Order—Lenalee certainly hadn't been able to, despite her best efforts—but the very thought of a friendly face made his chest hurt. Johnny's open devotion had been like a balm against burned skin, soothing the ache of his loneliness even as it reminded him just how painful it felt. Allen didn't know if he could bear seeing his closest friends right now. He remembered Lavi just after their victory in the Ark, an easy smile on his face as he wrapped an arm around Allen's shoulder, his warm friendship more stable than anything else Allen could feel at that moment—

Allen ducked his head down, feeling the knot in his throat grow tighter.

He wished Lavi were here to give him another hug. He wished Lenalee could smile at him and tell him things were going to be okay. He wished he was back at the Order, surrounded by Komui plotting and the Science Department scheming and Jerry cooking something delicious in the mess hall—

He screwed his eyes shut, forcing the burning feeling away. He couldn't cry. He'd never stop. He didn't have _time_ for this, not now, not when they were so close to getting the answers he needed.

It took a long moment, but Allen gradually regained control of his body. He counted steadily, breathing with slow inhales and exhales and measuring the time until it no longer felt like he was about to burst. He stayed motionless, counting over and over again like a prayer.

By the time morning light began to glimmer through the gap in the curtains, Allen was refocused, the pain in his heart safely locked away again.

* * *

It only took until the day's second bathroom break for Kanda to start losing his relative cool.

It wasn't surprising. After nearly a full day trapped in Tiedoll's Innocence carriage, Allen was feeling stir-crazy himself, even though his lack of sleep left him too drained to be fidgety. Johnny seemed well accustomed to long stretches of inactivity, tucked quietly into a book from his bag, and Tiedoll was safely away from the rest of the group, but Kanda had given up on meditating early in the day and had only grown more restless since.

As Allen returned from the trees, enjoying the fresh air of their brief respite, he could hear Kanda in the midst of conversation with Tiedoll.

"You have to sleep," Kanda said, with the disgruntled undertone of a person who despised repeating himself. "Activating your Innocence this long is making you look like a corpse."

"How rude," Tiedoll replied mildly. "Is that any way for a son to speak to his father?"

"I'm not your son," Kanda snapped, before taking a measured breath. "And you know I'm right. You're draining yourself too much—"

"You should really take this time to go to the bathroom," Tiedoll said, ignoring the statement. "The longer we wait, the more exposed we'll be."

Standing a few steps away, Allen wasn't able to see the pair, but he could very easily picture Kanda's face turning red with frustration.

"Look, _old man—_ "

"Such disrespectful _language_ , Yuu- _kun_ ," interrupted Tiedoll. His words were followed by a distinct thud. "And put that sword away! Do you want to bring attention down on us by starting a needless fight? Now, go on and take a rest—we'll need to head out shortly."

Johnny approached from the woods as a muffled, forcefully restrained fight began at the front of the carriage. He blinked at the scene, pausing beside Allen.

"What's he mad about?" Johnny asked.

"Everything," Allen replied with a shrug.

Johnny shot him a quick grin. "Y'know, this is probably the quietest I've ever heard Kanda fight before. It's so off-putting."

Returning the smile, Allen made to reply, but his words were cut short when Kanda toppled from the front of the carriage. He managed to land on his feet, but when he wheeled around to attack back, he caught sight of Allen and Johnny watching him, neither one able to keep the amusement off their face.

Kanda glared at them both.

Unable to help himself, Allen asked, "So, how's the General life treating you?"

A vein on Kanda's forehead twitched. For a brief moment, Allen thought he was going to lash out, which honestly made Allen feel the most normal that he had in days. Johnny glanced between the two, clearly debating the need to back away.

After making an overt effort to contain himself, spots of anger bright on his cheeks, Kanda whirled the opposite direction and began stomping toward the forest, snarling, "We're leaving in two minutes, _beansprout_!"

"That's not my name, _idiot Kanda_!" Allen called back, but he couldn't quite muster the necessary bite to his words.

Even fighting with Kanda felt like a fond memory after everything that had happened.

Allen looked up at the branches overhead, face warmed by the sun dappling through the green leaves like starlight, and tried not to think of the last time he'd been home.

They were only two days out. He'd have answers soon.

He tried not to think of the ominous prediction made by Cross in the field—the warning that he would be devoured by the memories of the Fourteenth until nothing of Allen remained.

Maybe—just maybe—he could find a way to save himself.

It was a desperate hope, but it was all he had.

* * *

_He's at an outdoor café, sun beating on his back as he digs a spoon into a heaping mound of ice cream. The ice cream is a mix of specialty flavors, pumpkin and chocolate and ginger, the taste of autumn exploding on his tongue._

" _I'll never get over how much you can put away," Lavi comments, laughing. He's sitting across from him, eating his own small cone of dark chocolate ice cream at a more sedate pace. "Didn't we just have dinner?"_

_Allen makes a face at him. "You try maintaining this arm and see how long you last."_

" _No thanks, my Innocence and I are perfectly happy together," Lavi teases. He_ _smirks_ _at Allen, almost flirtatiously, and Allen is torn between the desire to laugh or to blush. Before Lavi can say anything else, a loud bang interrupts their meal._

_Allen jerks, anticipating the tingling sensation of his cursed eye activating, but nothing happens. Instead, Allen focuses in on a group of children playing beside the café. They're throwing little balls of white at the ground and shrieking with laughter as they explode at each other's feet. Adults pass by them with scarcely a glance, too used to the raucous activity to pay them any mind. The Harvest Festival is in full swing around them, with hordes of people milling about and exploring the various stands._

_Allen looks back over at Lavi, who is watching the children with a mildly puzzled expression. His hand is still braced on his belt, hovering just shy of the mallet strapped to his thigh, but he seems to have taken the cue from Allen that there's no threat._

" _They let kids play with those here?" Lavi asks._

" _Why shouldn't they?"_

" _I only remember seeing soldiers mess around with them for pranks and stuff."_

" _Didn't you play with them as a kid?" Allen replies, taking a big bite of his sundae._

" _Maybe when I was really little?" Lavi says, his tone hesitant. For a brief moment, his eyes go wistful, and he adds, "I didn't actually get to play with other kids much after I joined Bookman. It wasn't appropriate."_

" _What do you mean?" Allen asks, frowning. As he stares, there's a flicker behind Lavi's eye, like Allen's accidentally stumbled upon a darker memory than intended, but it's gone in a flash._

_Instead, Lavi shoots him a guileless smile. "Well, beansprout, the Bookman Clan has its own code. We're not supposed to—"_

_Without warning, the scene shifts. Suddenly, Allen is in a room lit by the dim glow of candlelight, staring down at a musty scroll unrolled on a desk._

"— _form attachments," another voice finishes, low and familiar. Allen looks up to see Cross Marian leaning against the far wall, staring at him with a blank expression. He still looks young, but his face seems glaringly bare with a plain eyepatch instead of his signature white mask. "It's not our place to interfere with the actors. Didn't you know that?"_

_Allen regards Cross in silence for a long moment, before allowing a slow smile that feels wholly unnatural on his lips._

" _I'm not unfamiliar with your ways," he eventually replies. His voice is too deep, intonation strange, like someone else is speaking. "I just find them ridiculous."_

" _How so?"_

" _You act like you're separate from the world, like your mission somehow sets you apart from your so-called 'actors'," Allen says. "But what makes you think you won't be destroyed with the rest of them?"_

_Cross doesn't respond. His gaze stays cold, locked on Allen with an intensity belied by his neutral mask._

" _See, this is why the Noah are going to win in the end," Allen murmurs, his smile twisting into something smug. "We're not just pretending to be above it all. We actually are different."_

_He focuses in on the scroll. It's a spell of some sort, the words nearly blurred beyond recognition from age—_

A hand on his shoulder made Allen jerk awake, his eyes flying open to see Johnny hovering over him.

"Oh!" Johnny cried, reeling back in a brief moment of panic before catching himself. His eyes flickered to Allen's for a split second before he exhaled in a rush. "Sorry—sorry, Allen, I didn't mean to startle you—"

Allen stared at him, still half-caught in his dream, but the line of nervous tension in Johnny's shoulders dragged him back to reality. He could still see a pale mark on Johnny's temple that Kanda's treatment hadn't yet completely healed.

"It's okay," Allen replied, his voice faint to his ears. "What's going on?"

"Kanda finally convinced Tiedoll to make camp," Johnny answered, gesturing to the front of the carriage. Allen could see Kanda sitting beside Tiedoll through the gap in the curtains, their forms backlit by magenta twilight. "We're going to be pulling off to the side soon, so we'll need to be on alert while Tiedoll sleeps."

Alled rubbed sleep from his eyes, still not quite tracking how late it was. His exhaustion must have caught up with him. The strange mix of memories in his dream made him feel disjointed, like he was missing time yet again.

Still, they were getting closer. He could manage a few weird dreams.

"Camping under the stars waiting for an attack from nowhere?" Allen replied, managing a tight grin over at Johnny. "Sounds familiar."

The beleaguered amusement on Johnny's face looked forced, but he smiled as he helped Allen up. "Hopefully not _too_ familiar."

* * *

The night passed quietly while Tiedoll slept, his Innocence powered down and hidden away under his coat. They had managed to find a tiny, tucked away grove in the middle of the forest, with trees tall and foliage dense enough to prevent easy discovery. Allen was grateful that the weather stayed pleasantly warm, as any sort of fire would be a foolish move in the darkness.

Kanda spent most of the evening roaming the trails around the woods, keeping a keen eye out for any potential threats. Restless after his nap, Allen offered to join him at first, but Kanda's glare had cut down any hope of that.

"The last thing we need is for you to parade around _asking_ for someone to see you," Kanda snapped. He gestured to the ground beside their bags, tone dismissive. "Now sit down and keep watch."

Allen bristled, a line of anger tightening through his shoulders. "Ex _cuse you_ , I'm not a _child_ —"

" _Sit_ ," Kanda snarled. He narrowed his eyes, pointing at the ground like Allen was being a particularly disobedient dog.

"Look, just because you're a _general_ now doesn't mean you can just—"

"Um," Johnny interrupted, stepping between the two before Allen could finish his retort. He looked apprehensively at Allen. "I would rather you stayed here, too."

Allen stared at him, more shocked by his courage than the betrayal, and Johnny hurriedly added, "Not that you wouldn't be helpful as a lookout, I'm sure, but, um— if Kanda is going to be gone and Tiedoll's asleep, I'd rather we have someone who can actually fight. I'm not going to be able to do much against any akuma that happen to find us."

The logic of his statement threw Allen for a loop. He hesitated, knowing full well that wasn't Kanda's rationale, but finding Johnny's reasoning hard to debate.

Mistaking the pause for agreement, Kanda made a satisfied grunt and turned to walk away.

"Hey, no, I wasn't—," Allen began, realizing that he'd lost the argument before he could rally against it. Kanda ignored him and disappeared into the forest. Allen sighed heavily before trudging over to their bags to dig through whatever stores Tiedoll hadn't devoured before lying down to sleep.

The evening wore on with little to note, though Kanda reported back various sightings of Finders throughout the night. They were often too far away for him to place a face to a name, but even those reports made the hair on the back of Allen's neck stand up.

 _They can't be everywhere_ , Allen reminded himself as the first signs of daylight began to show in the distance. Kanda had just confirmed the fifth sighting of a Finder pair, closer than any had been all night.

"They're closing in on us," said Johnny, brows furrowing in concern.

"We'll probably need to move before it gets too light," Kanda replied. His jaw tightened as he looked over at Tiedoll. The old man was still tucked beneath the oak tree. He hadn't stirred all night, his limbs heavy with exhaustion. "It hasn't been long enough, but they're branching out their search. They've probably realized that you managed to get out of the town."

"Do they know that you guys are with me?" Allen asked. He paced nervously around the tiny grove, eyeing the direction from which Kanda had come. At any moment, a pair of Finders could come from around the bend, accompanied by a golem that could spark an all-out chase in minutes. The morning light only served to exacerbate the shadows masking the rest of the path.

"I didn't exactly stop to chat with them," Kanda replied blandly. "Who knows what they know?"

"Well, it might change their tactics," snapped Allen. "Especially if they know about General Tiedoll—"

"They definitely don't know about him."

"Yet," Johnny predicted quietly from the ground, where he was nervously putting away the few items they'd unpacked during the night.

"We'd be seeing a lot more Exorcists if they knew my master was here," Kanda said, glancing at Johnny with mild annoyance. "I don't know how much they know about Johnny and me. But Tiedoll found _us_ , not the other way around, so he's on his own plan here and I trust he didn't broadcast it."

"But if they _do_ know, using his carriage might give us away—"

"Do you have a better plan?" interrupted Kanda. He sounded more tired than aggravated, like he almost hoped that Allen did have another option, and that more than anything startled Allen into silence. Kanda watched him for a long moment, waiting for a response, before he sighed heavily.

"We'll just have to play it by ear," Kanda continued, sounding more drained than Allen had realized. He gestured to the bags, saying, "Get everything together. I'll go wake up the general."

Part of Allen wanted to argue, restless irritation humming beneath his skin, but even he could tell that it wasn't Kanda he really wanted to fight. Allen wasn't entirely sure who he _did_ want to fight, exactly — the Earl? The other Noah? Nea? — but the exhaustion in Kanda's tone sounded too close to his own. He couldn't help the whisper in his mind that reminded him that Kanda had shown up to help _him_. Whatever his reasons might be, that was more than Allen had ever expected.

So instead of snarling back, Allen just sighed with an irritated huff that made Johnny stare at him nervously. He snatched his coat from the ground and brushed away the dirt and leaves with more force than necessary.

"I'll just—," Johnny began, glancing between Allen and Kanda in mild distress. "I'm going to see if the way is clear."

He headed to the mouth of the grove, leaving Kanda and Allen standing alone by the bags. For a brief moment, their eyes met, the spark of conflict still dimly lit between them, before Kanda rolled his eyes and turned away.

Allen did the same, focusing his attention back on his coat as he heard Kanda shake Tiedoll awake. He took a couple of deep breaths, willing the latent irritation to fade away through sheer force of will.

 _Just another day and you'll be at the mansion_ , Allen reminded himself, silently urging his muscles to relax. _Just another day and you'll have answers—_

But his hopes were dashed when Johnny suddenly scampered back to the clearing, eyes wide with panic.

"Kanda!" Johnny cried through a forced whisper, head whipping around to stare back the way he'd come.

Allen followed his gaze.

Standing in the mouth of the clearing, framed by the dim morning light, stood Crowley and Chaoji.

Allen's stomach sank.

Both Exorcists looked startled by their discovery, though Chaoji's eyes were lit with a victorious gleam. Crowley, however, met Allen's eyes with something like regret.

"I _knew_ it!" Chaoji crowed, gaze pinning Allen to the spot.

Kanda jerked up from his position by Tiedoll, face twisted in a familiar frown. "Where the hell did you two come from?"

For a moment, Allen wondered at his offended tone, before recalling that Kanda had been keeping watch all night. Kanda was not easily evaded. If Crowley and Chaoji had been anywhere near the Finders, he would have seen them.

If anything, Crowley looked even more despairing. "We—when Marie and Miranda came to support the town search, we used an old mining tunnel to cross under the mountain, so we came from the opposite side…"

Crowley trailed off, tone laced with disbelief as though he hadn't thought such an evasive route would work. His eyes kept darting to Allen and then breaking away, looking pained.

Allen just barely resisted wincing. They all knew now. Even Crowley, as tenderhearted and kind as he was, could barely stand to look at him.

"After that, we just followed the trail of akuma," Chaoji concluded, sharing none of Crowley's apprehension. He hadn't looked away from Allen the entire time, his self-righteous anger much easier to handle. "You're not even _trying_ to hide anymore, are you?"

Allen blinked.

From just behind him, Kanda snapped, " _What_?"

"W-what are you talking about?" Johnny added, a thread of real fear in his tone.

"The Level Ones," Chaoji repeated. For a moment, he seemed thrown off by their reaction, but quickly shook off the hesitation. "They led us straight to you. I would have thought you'd sense them following you, _Noah._ "

A sinking feeling twisted in Allen's stomach. He glanced at Kanda as the other man stepped next to him and recognized the same dawning realization on his face.

Somehow, the Noah had tracked them. It was the only explanation.

 _But why would they lead Chaoji and Crowley to us?_ Allen thought, looking back at the pair of Exorcists as Chaoji stepped forward, his Innocence activating around his wrists.

"Stop," Kanda said, holding a hand out. "Something's wrong—"

"Just because you betrayed the Order to join the Noah doesn't mean the rest of us are going to," Chaoji said, though his voice wavered a bit as Kanda faced him directly. He shifted his stance, fists clenched. "I'm not going to let a Noah escape me _this_ time."

"No, Kanda's right," Allen tried, knowing it was useless. He looked at Crowley with wide eyes. "Something's wrong. I don't think the akuma were following _me_."

Crowley frowned, looking between the two groups with indecision clear on his face.

"Shut up, _Noah_ ," Chaoji snarled, spitting the name like a curse. "I'm going to take you down today—"

"Chaoji- _kun_ ," sounded an authoritative voice from behind Allen. "Stand down."

Chaoji's eyes went wide as Tiedoll stepped out from under the tree, where the shadows cast by the morning light had masked his presence. For the first time, Chaoji's righteous anger seemed to falter. In a small, betrayed tone, he asked, "Master?"

"There is more going on here than you know," Tiedoll said, sounding graver than Allen had ever heard. "What did you mean about the akuma?"

"They—," Chaoji began, looking between Allen and Tiedoll like he couldn't decide who was more deserving of his attention. Sounding frustrated, he pointed to Allen and said, "They were following _him_. Crowley and I took out about ten of them on the way here."

"But you came from the opposite side of the mountain," Johnny said. "We didn't travel that way at all. There's no way they were following us—"

"Then they were coming to meet him or something," Chaoji said, waving a hand like it didn't matter. He looked back to Tiedoll, eyes pained. "Master, why are you here? Why are you with this—? Are you—?"

He couldn't seem to get the question out, nearly shaking.

"This situation is more complicated than you think," Tiedoll said in an even tone. "Please, calm yourself. We need to figure out what the akuma are doing here."

"Isn't it _obvious_?" Chaoji cried, gesturing to Allen. "He's a _Noah_! They're flocking to him to _kill us_ , just like they always do!"

"Stop being a dumbass," Kanda snapped, patience exhausted. "We've already told you—"

"That's not actually—" Tiedoll said at the same time, with a much kinder tone.

"I'm not an _idiot_ ," Chaoji snarled, flashing angry eyes in Kanda's direction. "You're the ones who decided to betray the Order to help protect a _Noah!_ "

Allen nearly took a step back as Chaoji focused on him yet again, alarmed by the amount of fury radiating from Chaoji's gaze.

 _How many of his friends have been killed by the Noah?_ a dim part of Allen's mind reminded him, almost like an afterthought. _How many times has he been helpless to save them?_

It would have been easier to dismiss Chaoji's rage if Allen couldn't remember feeling the exact same way. He felt frozen in the path of Chaoji's glare.

Crowley put a hand on Chaoji's shoulder, looking between him and the others with a worried expression. "Chaoji, if General Tiedoll says something is wrong, maybe we should—"

" _No_!" Chaoji cried, throwing off Crowley's grip. His cheeks were flushed with anger. "No, I'm not going to let another Noah escape me! Not after what happened with the Bookman and Lavi, never again!"

The words shattered the ice freezing Allen's throat.

"What?" Allen asked. His voice suddenly seemed impossibly loud. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, don't act like you don't know," snapped Chaoji, furious tears in his eyes.

A chill went down Allen's spine. Desperately, he looked over at Crowley. "What's he talking about? What happened to—?"

He couldn't bring himself to say it.

Crowley stared back at him blankly for a brief moment before realization struck. His voice thick, Crowley began, "They never told you…?"

"Told me what?" Allen asked, horror building in his throat.

Crowley opened his mouth to respond, but Tiedoll answered instead.

"They're missing," Tiedoll said. Allen looked at him sharply. The older man looked as tired as he had the evening before, staring at Allen with the practiced resolve of a person familiar with grief. "For nearly four months now. They went missing when they were in China, at the same time that the Noah attacked the Order and the Fourteenth first appeared—"

"They're not _missing_!" Chaoji interrupted, his tone scathing. "The Noah _kidnapped_ them! I _know_ —I was _there!_ And I'm not going to let another one get away!"

Without further warning, Chaoji leapt forward, striking at Allen with surprising quickness. Allen narrowly dodged his Innocence-enhanced fist, tumbling to the ground and hearing the trunk of the tree behind him audibly crack as Chaoji hit it instead.

Allen scrambled to his feet, just barely able to dodge another strike as Chaoji launched at him again. "Wait, Chaoji, stop—!"

"Don't talk to me like we're friends!" Chaoji snarled. His eyes were alight with anger. "I'm taking you down!"

He threw another punch, but Kanda was suddenly between them, blocking its path with the flat of his sword. He redirected the blow and made an abrupt twisting motion that left Chaoji to tumble into a patch of bushes at the edge of the grove.

"Get behind Tiedoll," Kanda snapped at Allen, not sparing him a glance as he readied himself to face Chaoji again.

Allen hesitated, glancing over at the others. Johnny was already safely behind Tiedoll, who stared at the building fight with a conflicted sort of sadness in his eyes. Crowley's expression mirrored his, still frozen in his spot on the path.

Before Allen could move, Chaoji freed himself from the bush, eyes flashing.

"Don't think I'll stop just because _you're_ fighting me," he shouted at Kanda, fists clenched in front of him. "I'll go through you—"

"I'd like to see you try," Kanda replied coolly. It was clear from their stances alone which one would win that fight, but Chaoji didn't seem to notice his disadvantage in the wake of his righteous fury. His Innocence flashed around his wrists, drawing strength—

Out of nowhere, Chaoji faltered, seeming to choke on the air.

"Wha—," he began, stumbling back. He brought his hands to his throat, gasping, as his Innocence dimmed.

Allen stared in shock as eyes began to appear all across Chaoji's skin, springing open with sickening pops. The eyes were bloodshot and angry, staring out at the rest of the group with a crazed gleam.

"Oh _god_ , what are those?" Allen heard Johnny gasp, horrified.

Chaoji stared down at his arms in equal alarm, his mouth agape. "No," he rasped, terror building his voice to a hoarse scream, "Not again, no, no _nonono_ —!"

He began to claw at the rolling eyeballs, crying out in pain.

"Chaoji—!" Allen began.

Around him, the others echoed his cry, but before anyone could move, a dark hand suddenly appeared in the middle of Chaoji's chest. Allen stared in frozen horror as he saw the bloody organ clenched in its grip.

It was a heart.

Chaoji's heart.

In the second it took Allen to process this, the hand was abruptly yanked back. Chaoji collapsed to the ground in a heap. The eyes on his skin shuddered and rolled on eerily, but Chaoji's actual eyes were already beginning to glaze over in death.

Allen looked up to see Tyki standing over Chaoji's body, still holding the blood-soaked heart he'd torn from his chest.

"Long time no see, _brother_ ," Tyki greeted Allen directly, smirking like he'd just made a funny joke. "Did you really think you could hide from us again?"

The instant he spoke, Allen felt a stab shoot through his shoulder. He jerked away, trying to see what had struck him, but all he saw was a familiar black shape fluttering above his head.

It was a Tease.

As it floated back to Tyki, Allen realized where it had come from.

_It was inside me the whole time?_

Tyki's smirk grew wider as he took in the horror on Allen's face. Amused, he said, "Y'know, I was annoyed when you ran off in that carriage made of Innocence. It's terrible for the connection. But lucky for us, you took a nice long rest. Just long enough for Feedler and me to lure your little Exorcist buddies right to you."

At the mention of his name, a shape shifted in the darkness behind Tyki. A Noah Allen had never seen before stood next to an open Ark gate, watching them with a creepy grin.

"My parasites showed me exactly where your corpse buddy was heading, right up until he bit it," the new Noah gloated, sticking out his tongue in a teasing gesture. Even from a distance, Allen could see similar eyeballs twisting on his eerily long tongue. He shuddered as Feedler continued, "Good call, Tyki. That Exorcist _was_ a helpful spy."

Mortified, Allen looked back down at Chaoji. His dead eyes stared accusingly at him.

 _He's dead because of me_ , Allen thought, barely breathing. _Another person gone—_

"How _dare_ you—" Tiedoll began, his voice laced with pained fury. He stepped forward to stand beside Kanda, who had readied Mugen with a decisive slash.

"Ugh, put this away for me, will you?" Tyki sneered. He threw Chaoji's heart at Tiedoll and Kanda like a piece of rotten fruit and made a shooing motion toward them. As they pulled back, startled, Tyki wiped his hand on his pants with a disgusted, "Gross."

Then, looking back at Allen, Tyki continued, "I'm not here to fight you. I'm just delivering a message."

Before anyone could react, Tyki lifted his other hand and threw something to the ground.

It was an Exorcist's coat.

Allen stared blankly, confused, before he noticed the strange discoloration of the fabric. The black cloth sagged damply in sections, smearing bright red streaks on the green grass.

It was blood. Fresh.

Behind him, Allen heard Johnny gasp in recognition.

"Oh god," Johnny whispered, loud in the eerie silence. "Lavi—"

Allen's eyes went wide.

 _Lavi_.

It was Lavi's coat.

It was Lavi's blood.

Allen's eyes snapped to Tyki, fury and fear burning in his throat.

Tyki grinned darkly at Allen's glare. "We have a present for you, boy. But you're gonna have to come to the Ark to get it."

"You—," Allen began, fists clenching at his sides. He couldn't stop staring at the bloody coat, lying mere feet from Chaoji's dead body. "Why would you—?"

"Now, I know it's a lot to take in, what with all the running and hiding you've been doing," Tyki continued casually, like they were having a normal conversation. "So how about this: you have a week to make your decision. In a week's time, come back to this grove. We'll have a gateway open for you. You can come to the Ark, see your friend, and we'll have a nice long chat."

"Ha, yeah," Feedler echoed from behind him, snickering shrilly. "A chat."

"Or," Tyki continued smoothly, "You don't show up. And we start taking Eyepatch apart, piece by piece. I'll even send them to you. They'll send body parts by post, right? Probably cheaper methods, though…"

The words froze Allen in place, horror weighing down his limbs. He just looked at Tyki, barely able to comprehend the situation. They had Lavi. He was alive. He _had_ to be, for the blood to be fresh—

 _If that's actually his blood_ , a suspicious part of him whispered, but Allen couldn't— _wouldn't_ —take that chance, not if it meant leaving Lavi with those monsters.

Where he'd been for _four months_.

Beside him, Kanda snarled, leaping forward with his sword. "Bastard—!"

As though he'd anticipated the attack, Tyki moved backwards, phasing through a tree to avoid the thrust of Kanda's Innocence. Kanda stumbled, thrown off-balance by the sudden obstacle, but before he could re-center himself, Tyki had moved to stand next to Feedler by the gateway, safely out of Kanda's reach.

"One week, boy," Tyki said to Allen, nodding at the jacket on the ground with a wink. "I'll be waiting."

Then, before Kanda could launch at them again, Tyki and Feedler stepped backward into the gateway. It vanished in a blink, leaving the grove silent and grim.

* * *

Silence reigned for a few brief seconds before everyone began talking at once.

"Chaoji-kun," cried Tiedoll, stumbling to the edge of the grove to collapse beside Chaoji's body. His voice was thick with grief.

"Where did they go?" Johnny stammered. "Did they— did they really just… kill Chaoji? Were those parasites in him the whole time?"

"We need to leave," said Kanda. His voice was as gentle as it could get, muted in light of Tiedoll's grief. Crowley stepped forward to stand beside the General, murmuring something low and weary.

Allen didn't say anything. He didn't look at any of them.

His eyes were fixed on the bloody coat lying forgotten on the ground.

Slowly, Allen stepped toward it.

It was damaged: buttons torn off, cuffs frayed, and a long gash cutting down one of the sides in a jagged tear. Even in the dim light, Allen could see bloodstains smearing on the white designs of the jacket. Some were brown with age. But Allen focused on the brightest ones, which gleamed red and damp in the morning light.

 _They hurt him before coming here_ , Allen thought, kneeling down beside the coat. _They had to have just done it for the blood to be this fresh—_

Tyki's threat echoed in his mind.

_If I don't go—_

" _And we start taking Eyepatch apart, piece by piece."_

— _if I don't go—_

The blood glistened like dew where it smeared on the grass.

"We _have_ to leave," Kanda repeated from somewhere behind Allen, directed away from him. The sound of Tiedoll's sobbing only grew louder, and Kanda repeated, "Master, _please_ , I know you're upset, but—"

"He's _gone_ , Kanda!"

"I _know_ that, Crowley, but the Finders are close and we have to get out of here. Are you coming with us now? I don't give a damn if you run back to the Order, but unless you're willing to chase the Finders off—"

"I don't want to fight you," Crowley replied, sounding conflicted. "But I—"

"Make your decision fast, we don't have time."

"Kanda's right, it's getting too light out…" Johnny added.

Allen ignored the others. Half-formed thoughts whirled around in his head, the gut-wrenching desire to save Lavi twisting with the foregone realization that he _couldn't_ —that it would be suicide to walk into the Ark, to hand himself over to the Earl like nothing more than a spoil of war, but knowing what fate would befall Lavi if he didn't.

Grief formed a stone in his throat. His stomach dropped the same way it had in the Ark before, the hammer of Innocence crumbling in his grip as he watched Lavi fall away, eye wide in surprise—

—as though he couldn't believe that Allen would just _let him die_ —

Tears blurred his vision as Allen reached for the jacket, not really knowing why. It was damaged beyond repair, but the thought of just leaving it on the ground pained him. He stopped, eyes catching on a corner of white poking out of an inner breast pocket, and reached for it before he could think otherwise.

It was a card. The ace of spades.

 _His_ ace of spades.

Even without seeing the pattern on the back, Allen had played with his deck long enough to have memorized the fraying at the edges of the card. It was part of the deck he had lost in China. He remembered staring at the cards splayed across the ground, vision blurring in and out as Tyki gloated above him, his heart beating slower and slower until—

 _Lavi must have found it afterward_ , Allen thought, holding the card like it might vanish in his hands. His near death in the forest felt like an eternity ago, but Lavi had kept the card—had carried it with him all this time, tucked in the pocket next to his heart.

"Allen," Kanda said, suddenly close by. The shock of hearing his actual name from the older boy was enough to break through Allen's focus. He looked sharply at Kanda, who stared back at him with hard eyes. "We need to leave."

Allen didn't reply.

Kanda waited a few breaths before frowning, reaching down to grab Allen by the arm as he muttered, "We don't have _time_ for this—"

"Why didn't you tell me?" Allen asked, the words emerging unbidden. He yanked his arm out of Kanda's grip and stood up in one smooth motion, card still clasped tightly in his hand.

Kanda's eyes narrowed. He took a deliberate breath before replying, "We can talk about it in the carriage—"

"Why didn't you _tell me_?" Allen snapped. His tone was sharp enough to draw focus from the rest of the group. At some point, Kanda had rallied them into moving, though Tiedoll was busy using his Innocence to craft some sort of burial mound over Chaoji's body, still sobbing.

Allen hadn't noticed. His hand shook as he gripped the card.

"Allen," Johnny started, hovering just behind Kanda with a bag clutched in his arms. Guilt was written across his face.

"I—I thought you knew," Crowley murmured softly from beside Johnny, sounding heart-broken.

"It doesn't matter right now," Kanda said sharply, ignoring the others and meeting Allen's aggression head on.

"Like _hell_ it doesn't matter!" Allen began, ready to come to blows, but Kanda snatched the front of his shirt and hauled him close, patience evaporated.

"No, it _fucking doesn't_ ," Kanda hissed, eyes as black as flint. "I don't know why no one told you when it happened because I _wasn't there_ , but I didn't tell you earlier because it didn't _matter_. Until just now, no one even knew Lavi was still _alive_ , much less where he was. No one else had been kidnapped. The Noah never made any demands, and despite what he might have seen, Chaoji was delirious for weeks after he was found, so he wasn't very helpful. For all anyone knew, the Bookman could've just ordered the two of them to move on."

Anger burned hot behind Allen's eyes, and he snarled, "That doesn't explain why you _didn't tell me!_ "

"I didn't tell you because it wouldn't _change_ anything!" Kanda snapped back. "We couldn't _do_ anything about it and we _still can't_. Not right now. If we don't leave in the next minute, the Finders are going to see us, and then everything we've done so far will be for nothing. Is that what you want, _beansprout?_ "

For some reason, the awful nickname managed to pierce through Allen's anger, like a hallmark of easier times. He stared at Kanda, full of misplaced fury and grief and fear, and—for a split second—thought he could see the same thing reflected back from the older boy, shuttered behind a mask of control.

In that same second, Allen thought he might give in and break down, emotions crashing inside him like waves in a storm, but he focused instead on the card in his hands.

Lavi had kept it for him.

If Allen had any hope of giving it back to him, he couldn't let himself be captured now. His fury turned abruptly cold at the realization. Kanda was right. There was nothing they could do now but run.

He took a shaky breath, then another.

Finally, yanking his shirt free from Kanda's grip, Allen quietly replied, "Fine."

He could tell Kanda distrusted the sudden acquiescence, but he looked away from the resulting glare. There was nothing more to say.

Johnny carefully gathered Lavi's destroyed jacket from the ground, but Allen tucked the playing card safely away in his jacket pocket. He traced the outlines of the card as the ground rumbled beneath the carriage of Innocence, carrying their makeshift team—and a newly acquired Crowley—away from their pursuers.

They managed to escape, but the victory tasted like ash in his mouth.

* * *

_Anger sits hot in his throat as he whirls to face Cross Marian._

" _What did you say?" Allen snaps, his voice as foreign as the intense sensations coursing through him. He can't help the way his fists clench, every cell enraged. He's back in that dark room, the space lit by a single lantern that casts long shadows in the corners. He and Cross face each other in the center, standing just close enough to make discomfort shiver across his skin._

" _I said, it's getting worse," replies Cross, in a matter-of-fact tone that one might reserve for a particularly obtuse child. "Any idiot can see it. He hasn't been sane in over a week."_

" _He's just been under stress," Allen suggests, ignoring the guilty twist in his stomach, though he has no idea what they are discussing or why the guilt is there. "We've all been busy. He'll calm down—"_

" _You know, I never took you for a fool, Nea," Cross cuts him off, raising one eyebrow in an arched suggestion contrary to his statement. "Have you even considered the other possibility?"_

_His spine goes rigid. For a long moment, he stares at Cross in silence, the conversation balancing on the edge of a precipice._

" _What possibility?" Allen finally asks, voice cold._

" _The possibility that the Earl has completely taken over," Cross says, "and there's nothing left to save—"_

_Allen punches him, quickly enough that Cross doesn't manage to avoid it completely. He spins as he goes down, landing with a heavy thud in the corner. Part of his upper body leans awkwardly against the stone wall._

_He doesn't move._

_Allen waits for something to happen—knowing that Cross Marian couldn't possibly be taken out by a single punch, not in any lifetime—but nothing changes. The world seems to exist on pause. Even the fire in the lantern stops flickering._

_It isn't until Allen himself shifts that he realizes he is no longer caught in the memory. The room stays the same, but Cross is a motionless lump in the corner, face against the wall with only his bright red hair distinguishing him._

_Allen creeps forward, brow furrowing._

" _Master—?" he starts, reaching out an arm and blinking in surprise as he realizes it's his own. He's not in Nea's body anymore. The break in pattern makes him wary, too many experiences with mental trickery having sharpened his caution._

_Cross doesn't move when Allen touches his shoulder. Allen frowns, pulling the older man back until he can catch his face—_

_It's not Cross._

_Lavi stares back at him with one dead eye, blood splattered across his bruised cheek._

_Allen stifles a shriek, falling backward in horror. The corpse slips completely to the ground, battered limbs dropping like nothing more than a puppet with broken strings. He's dead. He's so very dead, with his skull half-caved in and blood everywhere and his visible eye glazed in white—_

" _Well, that's a fucked up image," a voice almost laughs from behind him. "You have quite an imagination. Or is this a memory? I can never tell."_

_Allen whirls around, trembling in a cold sweat, and sees Nea at the desk regarding the scene with the detached interest of a scholar. Allen doesn't say anything—doesn't really know what to say, not now, not with Lavi lying dead on the ground in front of him._

_Nea doesn't bother waiting for Allen to pull himself together. He gestures vaguely behind Allen and says, in a tone that barely qualifies as interested, "Who's the dead guy? Bookman's new apprentice?"_

_Allen blinks. "How… did you know that?"_

" _Oh, so he is?" Nea asks, sounding genuinely surprised. "I just guessed based on the eyepatch. The Bookman Clan apparently has a thing about them, something to do with sensory perception. Didn't you ever wonder what Cross's eye issue was?"_

_His mind freezes along with his breath._

" _Cross was a Bookman?" Allen asks blankly, feeling off-kilter as all of his recent dreams refocus in his mind, leaving him stunned in the wake of this revelation._

" _He was an apprentice," Nea corrects. "Bookman is the Bookman. There's only one, you know."_

_Allen just stares at him, unsure how to handle this new information. Not for the first time, he wishes that Cross were here, if only to scream at his master for being absolute shit at communicating literally anything._

" _I… I thought the apprentice took over as Bookman," Allen finally replies. It feels like his mind is working at half-speed, too busy reconfiguring his memories to account for this knowledge. He locks his gaze on Nea, not wanting to risk a glance behind him and reliving his nightmare. "I didn't know you could… well, do whatever Master did. Graduate from training?"_

" _He quit," Nea corrects, a smug gleam in his eyes. "Decided to help me instead. Can't say I blame him, really. The Bookman Clan is one of this world's least useful things, in my opinion."_

" _So, he quit to help you with what?" Allen asks. He can scarcely imagine further complications, but he senses a warping in his universe coming on._

_Nea's returning grin stretches long in the shadows of the room._

" _Well," he says, "for starters, he helped me find the Heart."_


	3. The Mansion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And it's back in my court for this chapter! Had a bit of a field day with the drama (don't hate me - Allen angst fuels my soul), and then Beta-roomie/panaili had an additional mini field day with her Kanda edits :P
> 
> Thank you all so very much for the kind comments thus far! Please continue to let us know your thoughts~

The Mansion

The second leg of their ride in the Innocence carriage was suffocating and silent. Allen did not dare to speak, on the chance that any conversation might fully expose the misery now eating a hole in his gut. If he opened his mouth, he honestly wasn't sure what would come out – sobs, obscenities, possibly even the contents of his stomach, because he really did feel sick.

The stench of blood couldn't be helped. Kanda had handled Chaoji's extracted heart in the process of his makeshift burial, fluid spurting onto his uniform where it had now ripened for hours in the carriage.

And then there was Lavi's coat. Johnny kept a constant vigil over the soiled garment in the opposite corner, his occasional sniffles the only sound to break through. Kanda aimed frequent glances in Allen's direction, trying to get a read on his condition, while Crowley kept his head down, swiping at his eyes when he thought no one was looking.

Allen knew this was his fault. His previous explosion at Kanda over not being informed exposed only the shallowest level of his pain, so far from the heart of the matter it was almost petty. It merely chipped away at the façade masking his own guilt over what he knew, deep down, was coming – judgment for his sad attempts to run, for abandoning his friends, for inadvertently luring Chaoji to his death.

For Lavi.

Despite how much Allen tried to veer away, his thoughts kept coming back to the ultimatum Tyki had placed on his shoulders.

He would go to the Ark and barter himself for Lavi's life. That, or both of them would die in the whole ordeal. Allen had resigned himself to that fate, hour by passing hour on the road. No matter how many times he replayed Tyki's words in his head and analyzed the situation, there was no better alternative. Not if he wanted Lavi to survive.

There was a worse one, though. Allen could not process the thought that Lavi might already be past saving. Would he even last the week? Had Tyki already amputated a limb or removed a less-vital organ, knowing he might die shortly after a rescue anyway? There was so much blood on that coat, so much that even an entire carriage made of Innocence couldn't purify the smell…

He held his breath, teetering at the edge of sanity. He clenched the ace of spades in his breast pocket as tightly as his fingers could hold without bending it.

"Well, gentlemen, we've found our mansion," Tiedoll announced, severing Allen's train of thought and sounding as exhausted as they collectively felt.

Allen stared through the small crack in the carriage's back curtains, glimpsing endless wheat fields set ablaze against the horizon of late afternoon. The estate looked just like it had in his dreams, a perfect copy of a place he'd never known. It was a miracle they had found it, much less arrived without being trailed and captured on the spot, but Allen couldn't will any joy over the achievement.

He broke his gaze away.

Another hollow victory.

* * *

A boisterous woman named Jo and bookish young girl greeted their party on the path, as if they had somehow _expected_ a roughed-up gang of Exorcists to pay a call. Introductions went by in a blur, and they followed on the heels of Jo, the girl Lucia, and her black golem to the weathered stone residence without issue.

Allen should have been surprised. Instead, he was bombarded by twinges of familiarity at every turn on the mansion's premises, from the twisted tree standing alone in the field to the crest on the door knocker. Even the smell of musty books and some particularly woody fragrance in the foyer gave him pause. Someone's cologne he recognized. He didn't know how, but he just _knew_.

He distantly heard Jo directing the group from the foyer to the kitchen for refreshments, announcing the location of a washroom where they could clean up after their travels, but he couldn't be bothered to follow.

Insistent memories swarmed in the back of his mind, guiding his feet to the staircase and his hand to the smooth wooden bannister. Nea had a history with this mansion.

If that meant answers, Allen would bear with it.

He needed too many answers. He needed them _now_. He needed to confront the Earl, to stop the Noah, to save humanity—

—to save Lavi—

Wings fluttered at his shoulder, and Allen nearly jumped out of his skin. The strange new golem – Urcanpy, he briefly remembered – hovered near him with an air of curiosity. He could read its subtle mannerisms, though not as well as Timcanpy's. It was almost comforting.

Urcanpy flitted around until he settled on a windowsill near Allen's hand. Allen looked back up from the sill and realized he had been staring out a second-story window at the twisted tree once again. It chilled him, made his heart race… As if he were looking at his own gravestone from a previous life under a forgotten name.

Where was he? How long had he been here?

"Her name's Cornelia," a prim voice sounded behind him. Allen whipped around, clutching his chest and taking a few deep breaths. Urcanpy now fluttered over a young girl's head – Lucia, Jo's assistant, whom Allen had barely met before going off on his own.

"Who—a-are you talking about?" he fumbled, his voice hoarse from disuse. He couldn't remember the last time he'd spoken. Had it been in the grove? The past day felt like a long blur.

Lucia adjusted her glasses, squinting up at him for several seconds. "The tree you were staring at. She has a name. Is something wrong?"

A dry chuckle escaped Allen's throat. _Everything_ was wrong.

He raked a hand through his hair and reached out to pat Urcanpy on the head. "I'm just a bit of a wreck, right now," Allen said. "Don't worry about it. I… used to have a golem like this one. A gold one named Timcanpy."

Lucia's eyes grew to nearly fill the rims of her glasses. Her mouth dropped open, chin quivering until she clamped onto his arm.

"Come with me."

She dragged Allen along the corridor at an ungodly speed for her size, narrowly dodging antique vases precariously balanced on stands along the way. Allen made no protest though, his pulse quickened by a curiosity he could not deny.

Their mad dash continued down the stairs at a dizzying pace. Paintings and portraits flashed by – a child running through golden fields, a woman in antique dress and bonnet, a family pose with two small boys.

They skidded to an abrupt stop at a closed door, and Allen braced himself against the wall to catch his breath. They had run the length of the mansion and down two flights. Once Allen's head cleared, he took in the dim hallway with its few lighted sconces.

"Is this a basement?" he muttered, mostly to himself.

Lucia nodded. She pulled a key from a pocket in her dress and unlocked the door. It protested loudly on its hinges, clearly in disuse.

The room's contents were mostly shrouded in darkness. It had a single narrow window high up on the wall blocked by a heavy curtain, and only the shadowy outlines of a large desk and chair could be identified in the wan light spilling in from the hall. Still, Allen's skin was electrified in the space, every nerve and hair at attention. His eyes landed on a few strange, smudged markings on the floorboards, half-covered by a mess of papers.

"I'm not actually allowed in here," Lucia commented, casually rummaging around in her bag. "But Urcanpy kept hovering at this door. He led me to the key about a week ago."

Allen shifted focus to her, watching as she squatted next to a lamp on the floor and lit it with a match.

Warm light seeped over the room. It was a study. Bookshelves lined most of the walls, packed to bursting with dusty old tomes and scrolls. Another mountain of them decorated half of the large desk. More smudged symbols joined the ones he had already seen, connected by broken rings on the floor.

Allen's breath caught in his throat. He knew this room. His recollection of Nea's memories conjured its occupants – Nea working feverishly at that desk, quarreling with a younger Cross in front of it.

He shifted his eyes to the left wall. A painting had crashed to the floor near the place where his master fell.

A tug on his sleeve brought Allen back to reality. He jumped in place, rapidly shaking his head.

"Why— Why did you bring me here?"

Lucia pulled him along to the desk. "This was your golem, right?" she asked, pointing at a large piece of parchment rolled open on the desktop.

The exterior image depicted was undoubtedly Timcanpy. Tears pricked the corners of Allen's eyes at the sight, his throat constricted, and he could only nod in answer. The rest of the parchment was littered with internal schematics, formulas and calculations – a mass of nonsense to anyone but their author.

"I just kept wondering what Urcanpy wanted with this place," Lucia said, shuffling her feet on the cluttered floorboards. "What happened to your golem?"

Allen splayed his hand on the page as if willing Timcanpy back to life. "He was destroyed," he ground out, "by an unholy monster."

"I'm sorry," Lucia said quietly. "I-I guess… I thought that maybe you would recognize these formulas, and maybe it would help with something."

"I think my master would know," Allen sighed. "But he's gone, too."

The girl cleared her throat uncomfortably, seeming to shrink further into herself. She shuffled toward the door, Urcanpy fluttering after.

"Let's go," Lucia called. "No sense making your friends worry. Besides, I'd rather not be scolded for nothing."

Allen took one last look around the room. There were secrets here, locked away in messy handwriting, in the faded and scuffed markings of runes on the floorboards. He could not make heads or tails of anything, though.

Nea might know, but Allen was not willing to give him free rein and put everyone's lives at risk.

"Yeah," he said at length, dragging his feet forward. "Let's get out of here."

* * *

"Allen! Hey, this way!"

Allen snapped his head toward Johnny's voice, only to find Lucia standing patiently nearby. As Allen came to himself, Urcanpy left the sill to follow her toward the group.

Belatedly, Allen realized he had stalled again at the same second-story window after following Lucia back up from the basement.

Johnny and the rest of their group stood halfway down the hall from Allen, watching him with a concern that bordered on wariness. Kanda looked ready to spring into action, as if waiting for a sign that Allen had lost himself again.

Allen resisted the urge to sigh, hating the added attention but unable to stop himself from reviewing his own memories. Was he missing time? Had Nea emerged without his knowledge again? Allen couldn't be sure, but he hoped to whatever god existed that wasn't the case.

Either way, he hurried to join them without a word, and they ascended to the third floor. He saw Kanda relax slightly and redirect his attention to a room at the end of the hall.

Allen was not prepared for what awaited them. They entered the large, somewhat stale-smelling bedroom in a gaggle, and he was the last to stumble inside. His eyes immediately landed on the bed.

Bookman looked like a week-old corpse. His closed charcoal eyes seemed nothing more than holes in his skull, and every wrinkle cracked against his ashen face like the bark of a dead tree. Only a thin bundle of limp strands remained of his ponytail.

Allen froze, all mental processes stuttering to a stop. He spotted a bag of fluids attached via tube to Bookman's arm, indicating that he was still alive, and remembered to breathe.

He could _not_ lose another comrade right now.

"—came to about three days ago," Jo was saying. Allen clung to her voice like a lifeline.

"He's been in and out since. Believe me, it's an improvement, despite what it looks like. Hard to believe anyone could survive that level of starvation and dehydration, not to mention whatever else he went through. Especially at his age."

"When did he get here?" General Tiedoll asked. He walked toward the bed and inspected the medical equipment. "I take it he's had at least one transfusion. Does he need more?"

"It's been a month," Jo said, clucking at him as she shooed him from the bedside. "And no, more blood is not required. You're dead on your feet, anyway. I don't need another patient."

"She's right. Don't even think about it," Kanda snapped. "You're going on bed rest as soon as we leave this room. _I'll_ be donating, if anyone."

"You should be careful throwing commands at your elders, Yuu- _kun_." Despite his huffing, Tiedoll didn't even meet Kanda's glare, still absorbed by Bookman's condition.

Crowley chimed in, his timid voice carrying from near the door, "With all due respect, I have to agree with Kanda."

While they chattered on, Allen felt Johnny latch onto his arm for support. His own legs shook, weak and tingling as he broke from his rigid stance and let Johnny pull him to the bedside.

"Good to see you, Bookman," Johnny murmured, placing his free hand over the old man's. "When Allen said we needed to look for this mansion, we had no idea…"

Johnny rambled on for a minute or so, but Allen could not speak. He kept staring down at the shriveled skin on that small, frail-looking body as his mind spiraled downward.

Why was Bookman _here_?

Did he escape or was he released? What did the Noah do to him?

If Bookman had ended up in this condition, even after a _month_ of recovery…

How could Lavi possibly survive?

Allen's breath came in short, shallow gasps. His throat burned, a word or a scream or something else cutting off his air supply on its way up. He couldn't hold it down.

_Oh god._

" _No!_ He can't—" he choked, his voice cracking. His eyes blurred over and he tore away from Johnny, bolting for the door.

He'd barely exited the room when Kanda tackled him from behind, pressing him face first against the far wall. The force of his hold knocked the air from Allen's lungs and pushed the hot tears over his cheeks. He was too stunned for a moment to struggle.

"Let _go_!" Allen hissed, making a weak attempt to wriggle free. His knees were shaking – he wanted to get as far away from that room as possible and collect himself. He jerked against Kanda's arms. "Just let me go!"

Kanda released his grip, but he spun Allen to face him and held him in place by the front of his shirt.

"I know what you're thinking," he warned. "But no one's launching any half-assed suicide missions on my watch. Got it?"

Allen just narrowed his eyes in response. He swiped a sleeve over his tear-streaked face and ripped Kanda's hand from his shirt, stumbling as he turned to storm away. He heard no footfalls trailing him this time.

* * *

It was all Allen could do to navigate the hauntingly familiar hallways. He only made it around three more corners and into a dark, empty room before he collapsed against a wall, sobs rippling through him in waves.

He felt himself slipping from self-control – it was a tightrope Allen could barely walk after his struggle with the Fourteenth. But this one wasn't on Nea. His own helplessness shook him to the core. He dragged one trembling hand into his hair and rooted his fingertips in place, as if that could maintain his grip on sanity.

After countless steadying breaths, Allen finally took in his surroundings. That same foreboding familiarity crept up the back of his neck as he looked at a well-used candle on the cluttered surface near his left hand. A mountain of wax half-covered its holder. He found a matchbox in the dresser's top drawer and lit the wick, a small gasp escaping him as it illuminated an array of pictures on the wall.

One of the young men in the pictures, Allen felt absolutely sure, was the Nea from his mindscape before – the unruly short hair and sharp eyes were distinct. The other young man, or boy in some pictures, could have been Nea's twin. He wore his hair long and tied back, though, and his expression was at once so kind and carefree that it hurt.

Elements of the two young men reminded Allen of Tyki Mykk as well, which rolled his thoughts into a tangled mass of confusion. Yet Allen knew that the other boy pictured with Nea was _not_ Tyki. Besides the fact that Tyki was a fairly new member of the Noah family, far from having a history with Nea, it was impossible for Allen to place that expression on Tyki's face. It was too heartfelt, too open.

Road's last words were suddenly in his ears.

_Nea fought for Mana._

Mana. A twin brother. Cross had mentioned as much. Had the Earl been after Mana, spurring Nea to action, or had he been after them both? The swarm of Nea's memories began to surge forth, throbbing at the base of his skull. This person in the pictures _was_ Mana. But how could it be _Allen's_ Mana, regardless of what his master had said? Even taking aging into consideration did not explain the complete difference in features. His adoptive father looked almost nothing like Nea or his brother.

Almost. Something about that kind smile struck a chord…

A sharp pain flashed through Allen's head. He crumpled to the floor, feeling only the fleeting impression of rug fibers against his cheek before his consciousness fled.

* * *

Allen drifted through passages of sketchy gray lines, spiraling into the indistinct landscape of his own mind. Somehow, he knew at once that this was where he was – it was no dream, and no impromptu vacation into Nea's memories. Skeletal trees stretched their claws toward the sky – toward a black crescent moon and pinprick stars. Thick fog settled low to the ground, obscuring all but the vague outline of a path.

As he began to walk, Allen heard a sudden thud behind him, as if a heavy sack had been dropped from a moving cart. He turned, squinting to see through the haze. His heart caught in his throat at the sight.

A body lay in a heap on the path, long limbs at odd angles and fiery hair in a mess. Lavi's tattered orange scarf stretched away from his neck like a noose. Allen was too petrified to approach, his hand quivering in an aborted attempt to reach out, but the head lolled toward him unbidden.

Lavi's face wore a painted bloody smile and clownish makeup. A single, brilliant jade tear streak decorated his cheek.

Allen's stomach churned. He choked and coughed violently, turning away only to catch sight of another body just a little farther off, half-buried in the soil. As he approached it, the furious expression painted over Chaoji's dead eyes stared up at Allen in challenge, searing accusations into his soul.

It took a few seconds to muster his courage, but Allen bent down and closed those eyelids. Only then was he able to force his feet onward.

He fixed his eyes on the path more and more. Why would his own mind paint his friends this way? Fear gnawed at his insides nearly to the point of distraction, until a patch of crimson caught his eye.

Allen raised his head, jolting to a stop.

Cross's body sat slumped against a tree, his blood-red hair trailing down to mingle with the pool of blood beneath him. A large black "X" marked both his eyes and stitched across his mouth. Allen flinched back, half afraid that the body might suddenly stand and attack, and walked on.

Countless bodies of friends and acquaintances littered the rest of his journey, a garish collection of mannequins in the shapes of the Finders and Exorcists and humans-turned-akuma he had known. Brilliant colors stood out on their faces in mockery of their suffering. As Allen identified each and every one, his heart gaining enough weight to sink him into the foggy sea, he began to fear seeing his path's point of origin. It would not be long before he faced that memory.

The day he gained his Innocence. The day he lost the only thing he held dear.

Allen would sooner die than see it defaced.

And yet, he walked on.

His path wound upward as he climbed a well-known hill toward a gnarled tree. Even through the haze, the outline of a gravestone stood out starkly against the black bark. Allen did not see the Earl, an akuma, or anyone else, so he approached the gravestone and squatted before it. Mana's first name was etched clearly in block letters, but Allen was startled to see a large crimson "X" marking out his last name.

He ran his trembling fingers over the marks. His heart began to race.

"You're a farce," Nea said, his voice so close that Allen jumped and crashed onto his backside. He looked up to find the other young man leaning against the tree, glaring down at him with his piercing amber eyes. Nea fiddled with a paintbrush in one hand, casually tossing it aside a moment later. Bright paint dripped from its bristles like a smoking gun.

"But you're not the only one playing the fool in this scene. You and Mana really are cut from the same cloth."

"You know," Allen growled, "I might hate you less if you'd stop acting so high and mighty. What can you tell me about Mana? And while we're on the subject of answers, how the hell did I end up _hosting_ a monster like you?"

Nea shrugged, a small smirk tilting his lips. "I honestly can't say how you became my host, considering I was dead for 35 years – let's call that an unpleasant surprise for us both. Ask Cross sometime."

"He's dead," Allen snapped back, memories of his Master's defaced corpse fresh in his mind.

"Oh, well. He's the only one who really understood the _how_ of it all," Nea replied flippantly. "I do, however, know _why_. But I'm getting ahead of myself."

He moved away from the tree only to plop down onto the gravestone without ceremony. He crossed his arms over his knees, leaning down to look Allen in the face, barely a foot away. His devilish grin reminded Allen of Tyki. His heart threatened to flee his chest.

"Let's have a little talk about Mana," Nea said in a sing-song voice. "Did you really think he was just an eccentric but lovable clown who adopted orphans on a whim?"

"What else was I supposed to think?" Allen retorted. "He _saved_ me."

Nea raised a finger to tap his chin in thought. "Hm, just how _did_ that work out?"

Allen thought back, but he found the memories surrounding his freedom from his oppressors in that cruel circus covered in a cloud of smoke, blood and death.

"He— Well, the circus was destroyed by the Earl and a bunch of akuma," Allen said, uncertain words slowly rising to recount his past. "We both escaped somehow. He used to say he was looking for his brother, and I wanted to help him remember…"

Trailing off, Allen suddenly connected that detail to what Cross had told him before. He had not truly believed it at the time – everything was so complicated.

It fit, though. Mana _had_ been searching for a younger brother.

Nea hung his head with a sigh. "I guess he found me, in a roundabout way. Looking for a dead person is one lonely mission."

"But—but that doesn't make sense," Allen blurted. "I saw your brother's picture in the mansion. He can't be the same…"

He couldn't shake the strange conviction that it _was_ true, though. The weight of it settled in his heart. None of the details were pure coincidence.

"I don't really understand how Mana could change his appearance," Allen muttered, as Nea's touted objectives turned over in his mind. "But if he was your brother, I can guess why you'd want to take down the Millennium Earl. Mana was afraid to even grieve or show sadness in case it might attract the Earl's attention. And then the Earl used me to resurrect and kill him. I just don't see why he was so obsessed."

A disturbing gleam lit up Nea's eyes, and he threw his head back in maniacal laughter.

When he'd finally calmed down, his expression chilled Allen to the bone. A slight but terrible grin cut across his face.

"Have you ever tried to run away from your own shadow?"

Allen went wide-eyed. Nea was not making sense to him, but something about the question raised the hair on the back of his neck.

Nea leaned forward then, placing his hands on either side of Allen's head, their eyes locked. Allen felt the sensation of a strong wind blowing against the fog in his mind.

"Let's get some perspective on this moment, shall we?"

In one blink Allen had been sitting on the hill, and in the next he stood to the side, watching in horror as his younger self ascended it. Allen started to move, only to find that Nea stood behind him, locking him in place by his arms.

"I have to give Cross some credit," Nea remarked, his smug commentary whispering by Allen's ear. "He sure knows how to make a little lie go a long way. I've taken the liberty of digging into your _true_ memory, while we're tangled up like this. You're welcome."

The young and grief-stricken child of Allen's past sat at the gravestone for a mere minute before the Earl appeared, offering his sickening reassurances. Allen listened to the time-worn phrase – the Earl's promise of a revived loved one by simply calling out his name. But here, on this hill of his memory, there was no akuma skeleton. There was only the Earl, towering behind Mana's grave.

The boy's shrill voice rang in Allen's ears.

" _Mana!_ "

God help him, Allen's heart stopped. The Earl split open like a circus tent, and a man fought his way out of the entrance. He was the Mana of Allen's memory but at the same time a _darker_ version. Tears streamed down his face as he battled for escape. He looked crazed with grief.

"No, Allen!" he shouted. "How _could_ you—!"

The boy tried to run at him, clearly intent on helping to pull him free, but Mana caught him by the front of his coat. Mana's other hand glowed with a strange light before he raked it down the left side of the boy's face, his lips muttering an incantation over the sound of high-pitched screams.

"Even if I can only curse you," Mana said as he pulled the boy closer, still straining against absorption, "I love you."

Mana flung the boy away as the Millennium Earl swallowed him whole again. The Earl drew a massive sword and the boy's Innocence reacted, his arm growing to shield him from the blow that followed. The parasitic arm began to drag the boy down the hill and away at astonishing speed.

Allen felt his heart cracking.

He wanted to deny what he was seeing – to write it off as an elaborate illusion that Nea had somehow conjured. But he could not. They were restrained in _his_ memories, where Nea could do little more than an archaeologist uncovering buried skeletons. Even Nea's graffiti before had been mere window dressing.

Now, Allen had no idea what to make of what he had witnessed. Had he simply tricked himself with an altered recollection up until now? Was Mana still alive? And if so, did that mean he _was_ the Earl?

The very thought threatened to shatter his sanity.

In the end, Allen watched, stunned, as the Earl of this very different memory simply vanished from the hill. His younger self had witnessed no further details to recall.

Nea let out a low, descending whistle. "I know they say the truth hurts, but damn—"

Allen wrenched himself free and rounded on Nea, launching at him and pinning him to the ground with his hands at his throat.

"Don't you dare," Allen hissed, half-blinded by the tears streaming down his face. But he let his grip slacken. Nea was crying, too.

"I thought you had other questions," Nea rasped. "Or would you rather shut me up?"

Allen didn't even bother to move. He sat back on Nea's stomach, swiping at his own eyes with both sleeves. He could not take much more. "One last question," Allen said. "Then I want you _out_ of my memories."

"You could've kicked me out earlier," Nea said. "You've done it before. But sure, one more question."

Allen glared down at him. "Why _me_? Why did I have to inherit your memories?"

"It was never about _you_ ," Nea began, sighing in exasperation. He crossed his arms behind his head. "I intend to defeat the Millennium Earl. How do you suppose that's done? Because it sure as hell isn't by killing off all the Noah supporting him."

"By an Exorcist, then," Allen guessed, "wielding Innocence."

Nea's eyes gleamed. "Not just any Innocence, either."

Shockwaves zipped down Allen's spine. Only one particular Innocence could truly defeat the Earl, after all, and Nea claimed to have found it with his master's help.

"The Heart," he whispered. "You mean you're using me because… I have it?"

"Well," Nea laughed, "I'd say _it_ has _you_. Innocence chooses its accommodator, after all. For the most part."

"Damn it." Allen ducked his head, burying his face in his hands. His pulse quickened, and he had to measure his breath for several seconds to regain composure. "It can't be—!"

"It wasn't an accident, I assure you," Nea cut off his denial, looking smug. Then, with a careless gesture, he amended, "Well, my connection to the Heart wasn't an accident, at least. I have no idea why I got stuck with you as my host. That certainly wasn't in the plan."

Allen scarcely heard him, still reeling from the revelation. He had the Heart? Was that how he had survived Tyki's attack? Komui had offered theories about the mysteries of parasitic Innocence, but no one had really been able to explain it, leading Allen to suspect that maybe... But then Lenalee's Innocence had crystalized, shattering more unwritten rules of how Innocence functioned, and even Bookman hadn't been able to offer a good explanation—

Allen froze, his panic abruptly redirecting at the thought of Bookman.

"Oh god," he said, his voice hushed. "There's no way— I mean, how am I supposed to go to the Ark now? I already figured Tyki was setting a death trap, but I was prepared to just let it be _my_ end. If they succeed in destroying the Heart, though… It's all over."

Nea squirmed a bit, and Allen finally backed off to let him sit up. The Noah straightened his shirt with a sour look.

"I don't see what you're whining about," Nea muttered. "So Tyki's invited you into the Ark – I don't even know why, but you're right to be suspicious. Either way, you're a _Noah_ now. Just take their damn gate in and make your own exit back out. Simple."

Allen gaped at him. He hadn't thought it possible. Then again, he hadn't thought quite a few things possible. "But they'll follow us."

"So have a good plan or don't go," Nea huffed. "You can't just waltz in there and let them eliminate the Heart. You're not ready to face the Noah alone, much less the Earl, so I assumed you meant to take backup."

"That was the hope," Allen murmured, unsure how much of it was a lie.

"Actually, wait," Nea added, pinching the bridge of his nose and holding up his hand to forestall any further comments. "Why _did_ Tyki invite you to the Ark? I shouldn't care, but I can't see you being that eager to attend a dinner. I, for one, turned him down on a recent offer of the same."

"They have my friend," Allen said, hesitant to divulge too much. "They'll kill him if I don't go."

An aura of disdain radiated from Nea. He scowled, his expression going frigid.

"Is that all?" he snapped, stabbing a finger at Allen's chest. "You know, bleeding hearts aren'ttypically saved by the will of Innocence. You're talking about _one person's_ life or death. And for him, you're willing to risk aborting all of my plans _and_ yours if the Heart is destroyed? No human being on earth is worth that."

Allen ground his fists into the ashen soil. This argument was nothing new. In fact, it seemed to be a favorite. He felt tears sting behind his eyes again but forced himself to meet Nea's hateful gaze. "We'll have to disagree on that. But you're right about one thing – I need a good plan."

As Allen made ready to stand, intent on finding his way out of his mind and taking some action, Nea yanked him back down to his knees. "At least tell me who it is."

"Why, so you can kill him yourself?" Allen spat. He clenched Nea's wrist in a death grip where it had latched onto his shirt.

Nea hissed, smirking past the pain. "Touchy. I think it's only fair to know the name of the person who could potentially be fucking me over. I could just kill everyone off to be safe. Either way works for me."

"Go to hell!" Allen shoved Nea to the ground and stood, dusting his pants before he stomped back up the path.

Nea's laughter followed after him without pause until the Noah decided to shout, "I'll find out soon enough, Allen! If you play nice, maybe I'll keep him around for a little entertainment!"

_Entertainment?_ Allen froze in his tracks. What was it about the Noah and their obsession with entertainment, as if the whole of human history was nothing more than an elaborate tragedy playing out for their pleasure?

Regardless of their shared attachment to Mana, Nea still saw humans as playthings. He saw _Lavi_ as a plaything.

Fury rippled away from Allen, quaking the ground of his mindscape and turning the sky to blood. He spun in place to glare at the instigator, but Nea was already fading, leaving only an echo of laughter behind as he went.

Complete darkness fell. There was nothing more for Allen here, and the surge of indignation made him feel strangely grounded after the shock and confusion of his own horrible memories.

He closed his eyes and let himself drift into the nothingness of exhaustion.

* * *

Allen awoke in an unfamiliar bed. He could not be sure how he'd gotten there. A gray dawn filtered in through the curtains, highlighting a trail of dust motes drifting to the wall of framed images.

His discussion with Nea came rushing back to his mind.

He needed to tell the others. Given the possibility to open gateways from within the Ark, a coordinated rescue plan might actually be feasible. Even Kanda had to see that. He wasn't sure how much he wanted to share, but certainly enough to convince them to mount a rescue to the Ark.

Nothing about Mana. The revelation of his connection to the Earl still burned like an open wound.

Possibly nothing about the Heart. That would just make everyone _more_ resistant to helping. And Allen only had Nea's assurances about it. The Noah could have lied.

He only needed to tell everyone his minimal foundation for a plan. That would have to be enough.

Allen threw back the covers and leapt to his feet, racing out the door and backtracking to the room they had waited in before. If anyone was up—and he guessed at least Kanda would be—they would be staying in the vicinity of Bookman.

True to form, Kanda was standing guard against the wall near one of the windows in that room, a vantage point from which he could scan the grounds outside and monitor Bookman closely.

When Allen charged into the room, Kanda's hand went to Mugen's hilt.

Allen raised both hands, halting just inside the door until Kanda nodded in greeting. It pained Allen, but he understood the cautionary reaction. Nea was less than pleasant to deal with when he reared his evil head.

"You're up early," Allen remarked. He walked over to check on Johnny, where the scientist snored slumped over at the foot of the bed. General Tiedoll and Crowley were gone, likely asleep in other rooms.

Kanda huffed as he pushed off the wall. "This isn't early. Hope you enjoyed your beauty rest after I dragged you off the floor. Not that it was anything new for you."

As soon as the words left his mouth, Kanda's eyes tracked away uncomfortably. A suffocating gloom settled in the air – Allen could tell they were both thinking back to the multitude of times Lavi had to drag or haul him around after he had wiped out on the battlefield or passed out in various modes of transport.

Kanda muttered a curse under his breath and went back to the window.

Against his calmer inclinations, Allen couldn't pass up the opportunity to address the elephant in the room. He maneuvered around the bed and took up a position against the wall near Kanda.

"I know this sit and wait approach isn't okay with you," Allen tried, unfazed by the utter lack of acknowledgment. Kanda didn't so much as glance his way. "Listen, I think I've figured out a way we could get Lavi out of the Ark—"

"No," Kanda cut across him. He hadn't moved a muscle, but his entire aura was seething. "I don't care what kind of plan your inner demon must've tricked you into believing. We are not sacrificing four Exorcists on the off-chance that one might be saved. Period."

Allen glared daggers into the side of his head. "He's _alive_ in there. We can't just leave him to be _dismembered_ and die!"

Kanda whipped his head to face Allen, charging the air with electric tension. "You're a fool to trust the Noah. Even if the rabbit is alive, what makes you think they won't just kill him no matter what we do?"

"Because they want me to _cooperate_ ," Allen cried, pressing his hands to his chest. "If he was dead, why would I go to the Ark at all?"

Kanda latched onto the front of Allen's shirt and gave him a shake. "Do you hear yourself? This is the _exact definition_ of a trap, idiot!"

"I don't care! I have to…" Allen trailed off, letting his face drop until his hair obscured the torment twisting his expression. "I'm willing to take that risk."

"You being a self-sacrificing moron is nothing new," Kanda snapped. "That doesn't make your plan a good one."

"Don't _patronize_ me—!"

"Hey, Allen?" The two Exorcists snapped their heads to the tentative new voice. Johnny was awake, sitting rigidly at Bookman's bedside. He glanced between them and the door, where General Tiedoll and Crowley had also been drawn to investigate the escalating argument.

Crowley let out a massive yawn, exposing almost all of his razor-sharp teeth. "Must we start every morning like this?"

"Excellent question," Tiedoll added. "What's gotten you riled up at this hour, Yuu-kun?"

Kanda released Allen in favor of directing his death glare at his master.

"The idiot beansprout still has a death wish," he growled, slashing his hand through the air in Allen's direction. "Can you talk some sense into him? I'm _done_."

"What death wish?" Tiedoll asked. He walked inside until he reached a comfortable speaking distance, calmly polishing his glasses as if he'd requested a weather report.

Allen dropped his gaze. He wasn't sure where to begin, or if standing his ground with any of them would work. But he had to try. He took a deep breath.

"He wants to rescue Lavi," Johnny said, beating him to the punch. He turned to fix Allen with a pleading look. "You've got a plan, don't you, Allen?"

"I do… Sort of." Allen rubbed at the back of his head, willing away the pressure of all their stares. He cleared his throat and continued, "If I go into the gate as directed first, I could make a different gate from inside the Ark to open here, and then you could all sneak in to bring Lavi back. Or that's what I've come up with so far…"

Kanda continued to fume but kept his mouth shut. The fragile hope on Johnny and Crowley's faces pressed against Allen's heart, and he wondered if he might just be setting them all up for an even bigger fall. Everything in the moment hung on General Tiedoll's assessment.

Tiedoll rubbed at his stubble in thought for half a minute before he said, "I can see where you're coming from. But are you sure you would be able to use the Fourteenth's power in the other Ark at all?"

And there it was: the potential gaping hole in an already flawed plan.

After a pause, Allen admitted, "Not entirely." He could feel their spirits in the room sinking through the floor and tried to rally them. "But it seems logical that I should be able to. Nea actually said—"

"You're going to trust _him_ now?" Kanda snapped, suddenly back in Allen's face. He poked a finger at Allen's forehead. "That monster's literally stealing your body from you!"

Allen swatted his hand away. "What do you expect me to do?" he shouted, throwing up his hands. "If there's a chance to make this work, we should take it! Lavi is _dying_! Do you really not give a damn?"

"I'm trying to avoid wiping out half the remaining Exorcist force!" Kanda yelled back, additional veins bulging out on his temples. "Even Lavi wouldn't be that reckless!"

" _Enough!_ "

A raspy yet commanding voice crackled across the room. Allen slowly turned to the bed.

Bookman's all-seeing gaze was fixed on him. Despite being in such a deteriorated state, the old man's eyes were reading into his soul, Allen was certain.

"You are right to be concerned," Bookman said, coughing harshly. "We cannot allow the Noah to eliminate Lavi."

Allen felt a swell of relief in having Bookman's support. He released a drawn-out breath and glanced around the room, gauging everyone's reactions. Most of the others seemed similarly relieved. Kanda's neutral expression was about as close to stunned as he could get.

Oddly, General Tiedoll had tears pricking at his eyes. "Your regard for your apprentice is touching," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "My own pupils are my _children_ , and I—"

"Don't misunderstand me," Bookman interrupted. "My reasoning is not so selfish."

A vacuum of silence filled the room. Tiedoll shrank back like a scolded child.

"Why do you say that, then?" Allen ventured, hating to ask the old man to strain himself further. Even if Bookman did not claim personal attachment to Lavi—which all of them knew to be a 'professional' lie, given how shaken he'd been after their close call in the Ark at Edo—Allen assumed it might be related to the Clan. It would be hard for the Bookman to train another apprentice at his advanced age.

Still, Bookman knew a shocking amount of information about the Noah and the Fourteenth as well, and his secret stash now included a history with Cross that begged for explanation. Allen rooted himself in place, braced for any variety of responses.

After another brief fit of coughs, Bookman fixed him with an impossibly grim look.

"Lavi has the Heart."

* * *

Allen's knees went weak. He gaped at Bookman, unable to say a word. Shock rang clear through the reactions of everyone around him, but it hit Allen like a brick.

How was this possible?

It ran completely counter to Nea's claims. It ran completely counter to everyone's suspicions, period. But this was not the sort of thing Bookman would dare to fabricate.

Allen's head spun, and for a moment he honestly expected to meet the floor up close and personal. Before the dizziness could fully hit, a hand roughly clamped onto his arm enough to keep him on his feet and bring him back around.

Distantly, he wondered when he had last eaten a proper meal.

Kanda gave him a rough shake and backed off an instant later, still wearing the impenetrable mask that had to be hiding his own shock.

"A-are you—" Allen squeaked out, finding his voice, "— _sure_ about that?"

"I am certain," Bookman said, coughing again.

_But how—?_ Allen thought, just barely catching himself from voicing Nea's claim. It would do no good to offer that information now, not before he knew more.

Kanda narrowed his eyes. "How could Lavi be capable of hiding something like that from the Order all this time?" he demanded, stepping closer to address Bookman. "How could _Hevlaska_ not know?"

Bookman turned his weary eyes to Kanda. "The Heart Innocence in its current state is dormant to detection. It functions as any other Innocence – otherwise it could be easily found and destroyed."

"Then how could you possibly know?" General Tiedoll asked. His tone was sharper than normal, eyes narrowed as they regarded the injured Bookman. "The Order has been searching for the Heart as long as I can remember, and we still only have rumors and guesses to rely on. If the Heart hides itself, how could you know Lavi has it?"

Bookman stayed quiet for a long moment, staring back at General Tiedoll as he appeared to mull something over. He finally spoke, his words hanging heavy in the air. "The exact origin of my knowledge is something I cannot share with those outside the Bookman Clan."

"Then why should we trust you?" Kanda snapped, his tone as harsh as the expression on his face.

"Yuu-kun," General Tiedoll cut in warningly. Despite his reprimand, he didn't tear his gaze away from Bookman.

"You know I'm right," Kanda argued. "The Order _and_ the Noah have been looking for the Heart for ages, yet you're claiming you knew where it was this whole time? You owe us more than some bullshit about the Bookman Clan if you want us to buy into the idea that Lavi has the Heart."

"It does seem like it would be a terrible risk," General Tiedoll speculated, his words more forgiving than Kanda's. He continued to regard Bookman with an unreadable expression as he joined Johnny at the foot of the bed. "To have your apprentice join the ranks and fight, knowing that he would be vulnerable to capture. If he does have the Heart, I don't understand why you wouldn't hide him away or seek protective custody in the Order."

"And cripple his apprenticeship?" Bookman rasped. "Operating inside the Order served as the best method to avoid suspicion or detection while continuing our mission as Bookmen. You are all well aware that the Central Administration would just as soon have locked Lavi in a cell or made him into a human experiment, had they known he held the Heart." He paused, panning his gaze over Allen and Kanda.

"That still doesn't explain how you know it," Kanda pressed on, crossing his arms in front of his chest and pinning Bookman with a glare. "I'm not signing off on the beansprout running a suicide mission just because you want to rescue your apprentice."

"He's our _friend_ , Kanda!" Johnny interjected.

"And it's a _trap_ ," refuted Kanda, his eyes still locked on Bookman. "They aren't even trying to hide it. If Lavi _does_ have the Heart, maybe that gives us reason to go anyway, but I'm not buying it unless you give us more than just your word, Bookman."

The room fell into silence, Kanda's ultimatum hanging in the air. All eyes were on Bookman.

After a long moment, Bookman sighed. His jaw was tight, but his shoulders slumped in resignation as he said, "The Heart was never lost. It has always been the property of the Bookman Clan, even when it was somehow removed from our protective custody. Lavi came across it as a child on the streets, and it chose him as its accommodator."

"But—," Allen began, the thought of Nea's revelation flashing in his mind before he remembered to cut himself off. Luckily, his reaction was easily lost in the clamor that followed Bookman's statement.

"This whole time?" Johnny gasped.

"But—but why would you still—?" began Crowley, looking confused.

"That's not a better explanation!" Kanda exclaimed, his voice rising above the din. The other protests cut off as he stepped forward, gesturing at Bookman in irritation.

"It's the one you're getting," clipped Bookman, anger creasing the wrinkles around his eyes. "I cannot and will not speak more on the history of the Bookman Clan outside the confines of our home, but I will assure you of this: the Heart has been in our possession since long before the Black Order was ever created. It is part of our duty to keep it safe."

"But you work with the Black Order," Crowley said, looking confused. "Do you not think the Heart would be safe with the people who could use it for good?"

"What is good?" Bookman asked in a cold tone. "Is it good to torture children for the sake of making Exorcists? Is it good to turn human beings into science experiments, all in the name of winning a war that's been going on since the literal dawn of humanity? I work with the Black Order now, child, but I've worked with the Noah in the past as well. I promise you that they also think they are doing 'good.'"

No one had a ready response to the ice in Bookman's tone. Johnny hunched his shoulders, visibly shuddering.

"Back to the matter at hand – I cannot offer you immediate proof that Lavi holds the Heart," Bookman continued. His expression was more severe than Allen had ever seen it, eyes burning with conviction as he stared Kanda down. "But I would not make false claims about my Clan's true history for the sake of _sentiment_."

Kanda glowered back at Bookman, still rigid in irritation, but he didn't try to counter Bookman's claims as silence hung thick in the air around them.

"It still begs the question," said General Tiedoll, his softer voice calming the tense atmosphere. "Why would you risk getting directly involved in this war if Lavi held the Heart?"

Seeming resigned, Bookman took another labored breath and continued.

"We had no other choice, once the Heart chose Lavi as its accommodator. In addition to our duties to record within the Order, Lavi needed to fully train as an Exorcist to prepare for his future involvement as the Heart wielder. His greatest hope for protection from both sides of this war, in the meantime, was the Bookman's immunity. I knew this when I accepted him at such a young age," he said, regret tingeing his voice. "The Noah have violated that immunity, but I suspect it is the reason he still lives."

"Are you sure about that?" Kanda asked. Allen looked at him sharply, but the swordsman stood ready for the reaction, coolly stating, "It has to be said. We have no actual _proof_ that Lavi is still alive."

"I would know," Bookman murmured, with a confidence belied by his weak voice. He didn't elaborate, but the comment made Allen recall previous instances when Lavi and Bookman seemed to communicate without words. Before he could consider it further, Bookman continued, "The immunity of the Bookman is the only reason I'm still alive. Sheril Kamelot made that clear enough when he ended my captivity. Given that our Innocence is still active, it seems they haven't fully disregarded Lavi's immunity, yet."

"If that's the case," Crowley spoke up, peering over Allen's head, "would they even dare to kill Lavi? Are they making empty threats?"

Bookman blinked, his eyes glassy with either fatigue or restrained emotion. "A few among them are acting without the Earl's consent," he explained. "To be clear, the immunity to which I referred only truly applies to the Bookman himself, not necessarily to his successor in training, though most do honor it that way – including the previous generation of Noah. But now, I assure you the threat to Lavi's life, and his Innocence by extension, is legitimate."

Allen felt the mass of his words stack up and settle on his shoulders like the weight of a mountain. He hardly knew where to begin.

"How…?" Allen tried, stalling until the questions racing in his mind formed a coherent phrase. It was suddenly hard to catch his breath. "Does Lavi even _know_ he has the Heart?"

"No," Bookman replied, his voice more faded than before. "I could not tell him everything. The more he knows, the more his enemies might attempt to pry dangerous information from his mind. As they attempted with me."

Kanda and Allen glanced at each other, remembering Kanda's recent mental violation experience. His deep connection to Alma was instantly turned against him by the Noah.

Kanda tightened his hands into fists.

"That five-eyed fucker," he growled. "He'd have a field day in the rabbit's mind."

The idea twisted Allen's stomach into knots. He did not want to consider the possibilities – the information that they could use against them all. That they might _already_ be using against them all. Allen had to wonder at the newest change in tactic, to that end. Had Tyki merely taken an opportunity to make a show of strength, unsure if Allen would go to the Ark or call their bluff, or did the Noah cheat their way to a winning hand after all?

"Bookman," Allen began again, his throat tight with emotion, "I still don't understand. If you knew Lavi had the Heart, why would you choose him to be your successor at all? Even if it offered him some protection, you had to know his fate would be tied up with the Order's side of the war and not with succeeding you."

Bookman closed his eyes and released a wheezing sigh. "This war is set to end before Lavi will replace me. The fact that the Heart has chosen an accommodator is a harbinger of the final battle. This is why the Clan kept it hidden away under our protection all along – to prevent, or at least delay, the inevitable," he explained, the pin-drop silence intensifying as everyone seemed to hold their breath.

"But even discounting that, I was personally to blame for some of Lavi's tragic circumstance," Bookman added. "My rigid adherence to the Bookman Code drove my previous apprentice away. I believe that is what inadvertently put the Heart at risk."

A piece of the puzzle in Allen's mind clicked into place, connecting disparate memories. The resulting question bubbled to the surface, and the words pushed past his lips before he could stop them.

"Why _did_ my master leave you?"

Everyone's stares nailed Allen to the spot – one in particular drilling a hole in his left temple. It took a moment before Kanda voiced their collective puzzlement.

"What the hell does General Cross have to do with this?"

Allen flailed a bit, stammering, "I-I saw him, in some of Nea's memories. He was with Bookman, too – he was his apprentice before Lavi."

Before anyone else could collect their jaws and interject, Bookman cleared his throat.

"That is true. However, Cross was never content with our role as observers," he explained. "He always did have a penchant for science and sorcery, and I can only assume he used his abilities to acquire the Heart without alerting myself or others in the Clan before it was too late. It was clear to me, though, during our time observing the Noah, that his unhealthy involvement in Nea's schemes was driving his efforts. I confronted him over the issue, and he resolutely renounced the Clan and his apprenticeship. He worked with the Fourteenth after that, but managed to escape being killed by the Earl."

Johnny rested his head on his palms, leaning in with interest. "Is that when he joined the Order? Did he keep the Heart with him?"

Bookman nodded once against the pillow. He struggled through another coughing fit, finally catching his breath. "Cross disappeared at first – I lost track of him shortly before Nea was killed by the Millennium Earl. The Clan discovered his official involvement as an Exorcist of the Order months later. He led a reclusive life on the fringes of the Order's oversight for over a decade before achieving the rank of General, settling down under the guise of priesthood for a time," he recounted, pausing for another long breath.

"It was thirteen years ago when Cross sought me out," Bookman continued. "He had paid a call on a former mistress and incidentally discovered the Heart's accommodator. Seeing that I had not yet chosen a suitable apprentice, Cross requested that I take the boy on. His mother had passed in childbirth, and he had been living under the indifferent care of the madam in that particular brothel. I reluctantly agreed to meet him."

By that point, the group had huddled around Bookman's bed like children around a campfire, drawn in by the tale's development. Crowley procured a glass of water and helped Bookman to a drink.

"Thank you," Bookman said, vaguely noting the rapt attention and carrying on. "As I was saying, I met the boy. He was wild and unruly as expected, but markedly talented. He was half the age required for proper training, and I knew that the Clan would never endorse such a choice due to his parentage. Still, my decision was made."

"Wait a minute," Allen cut in, more than a little miffed by the implications and his own obscure past. "Are you saying the Bookman Clan has some petty issue with illegitimate children? That has nothing to do with talent!"

"The Clan did not care about his mother being a prostitute," Bookman explained. "They were concerned that he might share undesirable traits with his father."

Bookman fell silent, seemingly unconcerned with the collection of confused stares directed at him as he took another sip of water. General Tiedoll took that information in with a troubled frown, his eyebrows furrowing together so deeply that Allen couldn't help but notice. He rarely saw the general in such a state.

Suddenly, Tiedoll's eyebrows shot up, his mouth rounding in surprise. "Oh! _Oh_ , that explains everything!" He shook his head, uttering a dry laugh. "Cross has always been a bit unscrupulous about his exploits, hasn't he?"

Kanda narrowed his eyes to slits. "You _can't_ be suggesting that bastard is Lavi's father."

Dimly, Allen couldn't help but think that if Lavi had been around, he would have taken those words as a compliment.

As for Johnny and Crowley, both had the startled and dubious look of someone hearing that Earth revolves around the sun for the first time. Allen was certain his expression mirrored theirs.

"No," Allen mouthed, barely even speaking. He broke out in a cold sweat. His stomach was creeping its way up his throat. "Please no…"

There was no way in hell his master had managed to _not only_ drag one of his closest friends into a tangled web of disaster, but to actually generate his existence in the first place.

Still, the more he thought about it, the more he couldn't deny it. Discounting his master's vanity and callousness, Lavi shared more characteristics with him than Allen ever cared to acknowledge. He was impulsive. He was deceptively calculating. He was distracted by beautiful women to the point of stupidity, even though—unlike Cross—Lavi never seemed to actually pursue anyone.

And the physical traits were ridiculously obvious, now that Allen forced himself to consider it.

Allen must have gone a bit pale, because in the next moment he collapsed back into a chair that someone had strategically placed behind him. Crowley's trembling hand found his shoulder.

Damn, he _really_ needed some food. Even if it wouldn't stay down.

Bookman coughed again, pulling his attention back to the bed. "I am sorry," the old man croaked out, "to burden you with the wrongs I could not right on my own."

"It's not your fault," Allen managed, swallowing thickly. He braced his sweaty palms on his knees. "I'm more than familiar with cleaning up after my master's messes. I swear on my life, we _will_ get Lavi back."

"Well, if we have to plan a rescue," Kanda said, glancing at Allen with a skeptical frown, "I'll be taking over from here. Your current plan is shit."

Allen glared at him. "I haven't exactly finished—"

"You don't have to. I already know it's shit."

"Yuu- _kun ,_ how rude—"

"He's not necessarily _wrong_ , though…"

Even as Allen steeled himself to battle Kanda anew, mind whirling from the day's wild and varied revelations, he felt steady in a way that had been missing since he'd met up with Kanda and Johnny days before.

The Noah had been chasing him long enough.

It was time to bring the fight to them.


	4. The Ark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Back to panaili (Beta-roomie) for this installment :) Talk about a wild ride! Also, I should reiterate the initial warnings about torture, violence, general creep-factor, etc.
> 
> Thank you again to those who have favorited or left kudos, and especially to those who have posted comments! They really do drive us to push on with the project. Let us know what you think <3

The Ark

The birds were beginning their morning song when Allen arrived at the meadow.

He stopped just before entering, watching for any sign of disturbance. The air was cool and crisp with just enough of a breeze to rustle through the trees, but despite the nerves dancing along Allen's spine, he couldn't sense anything amiss. The meadow seemed unchanged from the scene they'd left behind a week ago, a calm grove encircling a mound of tangled vines and flowers.

Some small part of him relaxed at the sight of Chaoji's grave. With his experience, Allen had half-expected the Noah to twist their hands in Chaoji's afterlife as they had in his death, but the grave was undisturbed.

He moved forward slowly, still eyeing his surroundings for anything out of place. It felt kind of ridiculous, watching for a threat when he was moments away from stepping into a trap, but that reality of the situation didn't seem to matter. He'd been fighting the Noah for far too long to trust their word on anything.

_Including Nea_ , Allen thought as he knelt by Chaoji's grave, head bowing in a moment of respect on instinct. He could feel the Noah struggling in the back of his mind, distracting but not quite strong enough to take over. They'd had a couple of additional meetings of the mind during Allen's unconscious periods – somewhere in the murky landscape between waking and sleeping.

Allen had taken it as an opportunity to initiate more borderline hostile conversation in his search for information about the Ark, the Heart, his master, or anything useful.

Ever since Allen had raised the subject of Bookman's claim, though, Nea had been itching to take control and confront the old man directly. At the time, Nea hadn't believed a word of it, eyes flashing with fury at the very mention of the Heart.

" _He's trying to manipulate you," Nea snarled, managing to sound angry and snide in equal measure. "He just doesn't want to lose another apprentice. You should have seen him when Cross quit— it was pathetic, really. What kind of Bookman can he be if he's that attached to his apprentices?"_

_A_ human _one, Allen wanted to reply, but that wouldn't help the situation. Instead, he countered, "He seemed pretty convinced that Lavi had the Heart."_

" _Impossible," Nea dismissed, rolling his eyes. "I was there when Cross cast the spell tying me to the Heart. We proved time and time again that it was successful. If your friend had the Heart, I'd be occupying_ his _brain, not wasting away in yours. The old man wasn't there, so how would he know shit? Cross wasn't even allowed back on Bookman Clan grounds after he joined me—I sure as fuck don't think he'd go running back to his former master with his tail between his legs."_

_Allen remained silent. Nea's logic and conviction were compelling, even if he left his claims of being tied to the Heart Innocence frustratingly unexplained. But every time Allen started to be drawn in by his argument, he couldn't help but picture Bookman's tired eyes. They stared at him with the weight of countless wars and endless strife, as unmovable as a mountain facing the wind of Nea's passion._

_They weren't the eyes of a desperate man. They were the eyes of a devout one._

" _You're a fool to go through with this," continued Nea, oblivious to Allen's musings. "I'm not going to let you ruin my plans by getting yourself killed."_

" _You're not going to have much choice," Allen snapped back. "This is_ my _body, no matter what you say—"_

" _For now," Nea interrupted._

_His tone was as ominous as the conviction in his eyes._

Allen could feel him fighting for control even now, pushing against the walls Allen built in his mind and searching for a single crack. The involvement of the Bookman had rallied Nea against Allen's plan, but Allen was strong enough to hold him at bay.

_For now_.

The memory of their conversation made Allen's jaw tighten as he glared at the mess of flowers decorating Chaoji's grave. He tore himself from his thoughts, refocusing on the mission ahead. They had a plan, as potentially hazardous as it was, and if everything went well, it wouldn't matter who held the Heart. He wasn't going to let them kill Lavi, even if he had to fight the entire Ark to protect him.

He could just picture Lavi watching him, his smirk highlighting the amusement in his eye. _"You do know that's the whole reason everyone's fighting you about this, right? You have the worst survival instincts I've ever seen, beansprout."_

_And yet I've survived_ , Allen thought.

He was spared any further musings when a soft hush swept through the clearing. Allen glanced up as the birds fell silent, noting the change with the fear of prey before a stalking cat.

Something twitched in his pocket, reacting to the sudden quiet, but it stilled when Allen rested his hand against the fabric of his coat. It wouldn't do to play his hand too soon.

A gate had materialized at the edge of the meadow, on top of the very spot where Tyki had appeared just a week before. The Noah in question was nowhere in sight, but Allen didn't doubt that he was being observed.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to will calm back into his shaking hands. It didn't work. Allen clenched his fists as he stood up and faced the gate, nerves alight with the anticipation of a battle.

Time to spring the trap.

As he stepped into the gate, Allen suddenly felt the creeping sensation of being watched. He paused in the dark entrance, glancing back at the sunlit meadow, but nothing seemed out of place.

_It's probably one of Tyki's Tease,_ Allen thought, forcing the suspicion away. It didn't really matter either way, given that he was willingly walking into a nest of vipers. He was mildly surprised Tyki hadn't come to meet him, but maybe watching Allen come to them was part of the game.

The gate opened to a long stone hallway lit by torchlight. No one greeted him.

He stepped into the Ark, brushing his fingers across the gate behind him. He could feel the Ark's reaction as he commanded the gate to stay viable, settling any lingering doubt that he would be able to use his Noah powers. Allen let out a breath he hadn't even realized he was holding, a brief second of relief in the midst of it all.

He took a moment to focus on the trace of magic in the Ark gateway, piecing together the necessary bits the way Nea had taught him during their mental conversations—begrudgingly so, but once the Noah acknowledged that the plan was happening no matter how he protested, triage against utter failure was the next best option. The pocket of Allen's coat twitched again, but he placed a gentle hand over it.

_Not yet_.

Not trusting the ominous silence, Allen walked forward with careful steps, recalling the hours of reviewing maps that had preceded this mission. Bookman had drawn from memory the layout of the Ark, though with his injuries he often had to rest after only a few minutes of focus. It was possible that the new Ark was slightly different from the Ark Bookman had lived in years ago, but Bookman seemed certain that the parts he had seen during his captivity here were the same.

Allen didn't recognize this hallway from his memories, nor did he recall any particular part of the map that might match, but there wasn't much he could do about that. The hallway looked like something built hundreds of years ago, its walls a series of misshapen stones permanently cobbled together. It smelled sour and stale, like fresh air was nothing but a faint memory.

The hallway curved into darkness, dotted with doorways on either side and illuminated by flickering firelight. Allen crept forward, disliking the way the walls seemed to crowd around him. It felt like he was miles underground, even though he knew any one of these doors could potentially open out into another part of the Ark with little effort.

Allen didn't bother checking any of the doorways as he went. Even if he hadn't had a mission, the ground was thick with dust beneath his feet. It didn't look like anyone had been down here for decades – which was impressive, given that Allen knew the entire Ark hadn't even been around for a year yet.

_Never let it be said that the Earl can't set a mood_ , he thought, quelling the urge to roll his eyes. There was a job in interior design waiting if the madman ever decided to quit the world-conquering business.

Unfortunately, the thought of the Earl only made Allen reflect on the memory Nea had shown him. The sight of Mana emerging from the Earl's suit was enough to stifle any amusement, choking Allen from shock even now.

Could it really be possible that Allen had misremembered all these years? The memory Nea revealed had felt real, clicking into place like a long lost piece of the puzzle, but Allen could practically feel Kanda's glare at his back as he snarled: _"He's trying to steal your body, idiot! Why are you_ listening _to him?"_

_Good question_ , Allen acknowledged, though his eye twitched with an instinctive resistance to giving Kanda any sort of credit.

Before he could consider the memory any further, the sight of disturbed dust on the ground ahead stopped him short.

He could finally see the end of the hall. It dead-ended at a T-shaped intersection near the scuffed dust, footprints marking an area of heavy traffic. Allen's hallway was relatively untouched, with the sole exception being the last door to the right, where footprints were littered heavily enough to create a crude walkway.

The door hung ajar, firelight from within casting a flickering glow out into the hallway.

Allen froze for a split second, nerves doubling down at the ominous sight. There was a slim chance this was happenstance, but Allen knew how it felt to be toyed with. They wanted him to look in this room.

He reached the doorway and peered inside, bracing himself for whatever horrors might lie waiting—

But there was nothing.

The room was little more than a small extension of the hallway, showing walls of cobbled stone littered with cobwebs and lit by a single torch. No one was inside. Allen's nose wrinkled as he stepped inside the room, catching the remnant foul smell of whatever had been there before. He noted a set of shackles and chains lying next to an abandoned pile of ratty rags, which cast a dark shadow on the floor—

His breath caught in his throat, recognizing one of the rags.

It was Lavi's bandanna.

And the adjacent dark spot wasn't its shadow. As Allen looked closer, he could see a burgundy tint against the floor, the rust brown only barely visible in the dim light.

Blood.

This was where they'd kept Lavi.

The realization locked him in place even as Allen's mind rapidly raced ahead, trying to glean as much information as he could from the tattered pile of clothing and the bloodstained ground, but there was nothing more to go on—nothing but old signs of his friend and the sour air from his captivity.

"Did you plan to spend all day staring at that shit?" a voice suddenly cut through his thoughts. Allen whirled around to see Tyki leaning against the doorway. He held a lit cigarette in his hand as he looked around the room with a curl to his lip, nostrils flaring as he complained, "Ugh, this room still reeks. Why would you stop _here_?"

"Where's Lavi?" Allen asked flatly, nerves on alert at the sight of the Noah.

Tyki smirked at him as he took a long drag from his cigarette. "Is that how it's gonna be, boy? After we went through all the trouble of planning a banquet in your honor? Tch, how ungrateful."

"Where is Lavi?" Allen enunciated. "I agreed to come here in exchange for his _safety._ You can't just—"

"Wow, I forgot how annoying you are when you get all righteous," Tyki interrupted, rolling his eyes. "Almost makes me want to kill you myself and spare everyone this whole fucking production—"

Without warning, Tyki jerked forward, hit from behind by something unseen. He slammed into the back wall, just barely missing Allen, and crumpled to the ground beside the shackles.

"What the—" Allen began, gaping, before his eyes caught on a familiar-looking slip of paper stuck to the back of Tyki's head.

He looked up to see Inspector Link framed in the doorway, hand still raised in attack as he stared down at Tyki.

"Link?" asked Allen, mystified. _Where on earth did_ he _come from?_

On the ground, Tyki groaned, bracing a hand on the wall as he pulled himself to his knees. Venom in his tone, he muttered, "Are you _fucking_ kidding me—?"

"I'm not sure I appreciate you walking directly into the Noah stronghold, Allen," Link said. His words were clipped with irritation. "It goes against my vow to keep both you _and_ Nea safe."

"What are you doing here?"

"Following you, obviously," Link said. "It took me nearly a week to track you down again after the town, and I come to find you willingly walking in here? Are you actively trying to die?"

"Are _you_?" Tyki snarled at Link, tearing the seal from his head with a hiss of pain. Allen caught sight of blisters rising on his fingers before he threw the paper to the corner, standing up and regarding Link with a furious glower. "Your little magic tricks aren't going to be enough to stop me from tearing you limb from limb."

Before Tyki could advance on Link, violence clear in his eyes, Allen jumped in between them with both hands held out. He could picture the potential fight easily; no matter how it went, it would throw a wrench into all his plans, and Allen wasn't about to let this surprise doom everything.

" _Stop_ ," he commanded, glaring at Tyki. "He's only here because he's trying to protect me. He doesn't understand—"

"I don't give a single _fuck_ what he understands—"

"I'm also here to help the Fourteenth—" Link began at the same time.

" _Shut up_ , both of you!" snapped Allen. He gave Link a sharp look— _don't interrupt—_ and then leveled his full focus on Tyki. Jaw tight, Allen said, "You mentioned something about a banquet, right? Link is my guest."

Tyki stared at him. With an incredulous tone, he replied, "There wasn't a fucking 'plus one' option on this invitation, boy."

"Take it or leave it," Allen countered. A part of him worried that Tyki might opt to drop their deal, finding it too much of a hassle, but he held his gaze, trusting Tyki's own plans to win out over his urge to strike back.

Tyki glared back, expression unreadable save for the fury in his eyes. After a long moment of tension, he finally snarled in annoyance and waved a hand at Link as though he was dismissing him. To Allen, he snapped, "Whatever, it's his funeral."

Satisfied that Tyki wasn't about to lash out, Allen lowered his hands. He looked over at Link, feeling his own annoyance blossom now that the threat was handled. "Now, what _are_ you doing here, Link?"

"As I said, following you," Link replied, tone flat. "I swore allegiance and I meant it—"

Tyki cut him off, sneering, "How'd you even get in here?"

"I walked through the open gate," said Link, unintentionally revealing Allen's involvement as he regarded Tyki with equal disdain.

Allen managed to keep himself from reacting in panic, but it was close. Regardless, Tyki's surprise only lasted a single beat before his glare switched over to Allen. With a tone that sounded more exasperated than angry, he asked, "Seriously? Not even a minute and you're already trying to pull shit?"

"What?" Allen replied, trying to maintain a cool demeanor even as he scrambled for an easy explanation. "You can't blame me for making sure I know at least one exit out of here."

For a brief, terrifying moment, Allen worried Tyki might see through his flimsy rationale. Then Tyki rolled his eyes, reaching in his pocket for his matches and pack of smokes. Lighting a new cigarette with practiced ease, Tyki said, "It's cute that you think it would be that easy, boy. This isn't a poker game."

"I'll play how I play. Agreeing to this deal doesn't mean I trust any of you," Allen sniped back.

Tyki smirked in response, shrugging as if to say, _fair enough._

"What deal?" Link asked, narrow-eyed.

"They have Lavi," Allen explained, even as Tyki grumbled under his breath about wasting time. "The Noah said they'd let him go if I agreed to come to the Ark."

Link's expression went blank for a few seconds, looking like he was rapidly recalculating. With clear scorn, he asked, "And you decided to _listen to them_?"

"They were going to kill him if I didn't come," Allen replied tightly.

"And we still might, if you waste all your time here yammering," Tyki cut in, pushing off the wall and waving his cigarette forward as if to guide them. "Dinner's waiting. Your manservant can stand in the corner and pick scraps off the floor or something, I don't give a fuck."

He walked out of the room, not bothering to look back to see if they were following. Without sparing a glance at Link, Allen scrambled after him, turning right at the intersection and heading down a slightly less dusty hallway.

After a few moments, Allen felt Link catch up to him, walking with brisk steps until they were at an even pace. Quietly, Link hissed, "Are you being serious, Allen? I know the Bookman's apprentice is your friend, but this is _war._ There are casualties—"

"I _won't_ let him die," Allen snapped back, shoulders going rigid. He was getting sick of having to defend his desire to save his friends, even if he realized the dangers involved. The very thought of doing nothing and leaving Lavi to be murdered burned a pit into his heart.

Link fell silent for a long moment. Allen knew without looking that he was trying and failing to come up with an appropriate response, pulling a familiar expression that Lavi had uncharitably coined as 'Link's constipated face' in the time before their lives were torn apart. Despite everything, the memory nearly made Allen's lips twitch in a smile, the whisper of levity like a breath of fresh air.

Finally, as Tyki led them up a narrow staircase, Link asked, "What kind of imbeciles are you traveling with that would _support_ this?" He'd apparently decided that questioning Allen's life choices directly would go nowhere.

Which, admittedly, was a fair assumption.

"I came on my own," Allen lied, keeping an eye on Tyki's back. He didn't doubt the Noah was listening to every word.

Link very nearly sputtered in response, taking a few seconds to reassert control before saying, "There's more at stake here than your friendships, Allen. You can't just risk—"

"That's enough of that," Tyki drawled, stopping abruptly on a landing outside a set of ornate doors edged in gold filigree. He eyed Link with an expression someone might reserve for a particularly filthy stray dog. "This is an affair of the Noah clan, so if you don't want to be flayed alive, I suggest shutting the fuck up while we conduct our business."

For a brief moment, Allen worried that Link might try to call Tyki's bluff, but the odds were too heavy in the Noah's favor. Link fell silent, his jaw locked in displeasure.

Allen could feel Link glaring at his back even after he turned to face Tyki, but he kept his expression cold. _There's more going on here than you know, Link_.

"Excellent," Tyki said, flashing an icy smile as he flicked his spent cigarette butt at their feet. Tilting his head toward Allen, he placed a hand on one of the golden door handles and said, "I hope you enjoy your Welcome Home banquet, brother."

He pulled the door open without another word, leading them into the belly of the beast.

The true meaning of the word 'banquet' hadn't quite crossed Allen's mind until he took in the opulent sight before him. The hall was lit by a series of crystal chandeliers peppering a domed ceiling. They cast golden light across the dark hardwood floors, reflecting off countless decorations that lined the walls. Stretching across the middle of the room was an enormous table laden with food, from baskets of crusted bread to trays of delicate tarts, and even an entire roasted pig displayed prominently in the center. Despite the abundance of food, less than half the chairs were occupied, accompanied by plates full of half-eaten treats.

Allen's eyes immediately went to the head of the table, where the handful of Noah had gathered. Jasdero and Devit were slouched restlessly in their respective chairs, flicking food at each other and paying little attention to anything else. Wisely was seated beside them, resting his forehead in one hand and glaring at the twins with undisguised irritation. Across from them, Feedler crouched on another chair.

But Allen barely noticed the other Noah.

His eyes locked immediately on Sheril Kamelot, who stood at the head of the table like a king surveying his kingdom. He leaned casually against a high-backed, golden throne and watched with hungry eyes as Allen approached. The clear animosity in his gaze was alarming, but it was the sight of the chair's occupant that made Allen halt in his tracks, freezing just inside the banquet hall.

"Lavi," Allen breathed, unable to tear his eyes away.

Lavi was slumped in the throne, arms bound above his head and tied to the top of the frame. Allen's breath caught in his throat, taking in the sight of his friend. He was paler and thinner than Allen had feared, with enough scrapes and bruises scattered across his face and neck to suggest more wounds beneath his clothing. Someone had dressed him in an ill-fitting suit but neglected to do so properly, the jacket hanging open to reveal misaligned buttons and smears of blood across the crisp white shirt. His red hair hung limply in front of his eyes, the length choppy like it had been hacked at with a knife. Even his face was littered with tiny scrapes from a poorly rendered shave.

Lavi showed no sign that he heard Allen. He stared at the ground, held upright solely by the tight orange binding around his wrists. After a second, Allen recognized the fabric for what it was: Lavi's own scarf, repurposed to tie him in place.

Before Allen's fury could fully take hold, Sheril called out a greeting: "At last, our wayward brother, come home to reap the rewards of the prodigal son!"

He spoke with a falsely loving tone, malice swirling in his eyes.

Allen remained frozen, eyes darting back to Sheril in cold rage. He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but to see Lavi looking like _this_ —

A jolt from behind sent him stumbling forward.

"Move it or lose it, boy," Tyki muttered, grabbing Allen by the shoulder to prevent him from falling over.

Against his instincts, Allen let himself be guided forward. He could hear Link following close behind, but his eyes were locked on Sheril and Lavi at the head of the table. Tyki walked right up to the table and started picking at the selection of tarts, but Allen halted a cautious distance away. He didn't anticipate an outright attack after all their efforts to get him here, but he didn't like taking chances.

Still, the scene seemed _off_ somehow.

Allen frowned, eyes narrowing as he again took count of the scant collection of Noah in attendance. Where was the Earl? Or Lulu Bell? Or even some form of _Road_? It didn't make sense that only a handful of Noah would be here to gloat over his return, but Allen couldn't see any sign of the others.

The uncomfortable feeling in Allen's gut twisted further.

"Though 'prodigal son' is not quite right, is it?" Sheril continued. "Our brother is still hiding away, isn't he, Tyki? And instead you've brought me Allen Walker."

The way Sheril spat his name drove a needle of alarm into Allen's spine.

"They're basically the same," Tyki replied, waving a hand like he was shooing a fly.

"Allen Walker, the pathetic Exorcist that my precious Road was protecting when she _vanished_ ," Sheril clarified, tone as sharp as knives.

Allen's eyes went wide. Road was actually gone? He had pushed Apocryphos' first attack to the back of his mind, but now the memories of Road's final strike flashed before his eyes.

From Sheril's increasingly icy stare, it was clear he'd noticed Allen's surprise.

"You never even considered her, did you, Allen Walker?" Sheril said, using his name like a curse. "My sweet daughter. And yet you walk in here like an honored guest."

"I wasn't the one who hurt her," Allen replied, finally finding his voice. "Apocryphos attacked—"

"Apocryphos isn't a concern of ours anymore," said Sheril, his cold expression giving way to a smirk.

"We caught him, hee!" Jasdero bragged from the table, clapping a hand with Devit. The black-haired twin added, "We got him pinned down under so many wards he can't even move. He's _never_ gonna leave this Ark."

Allen's bafflement must have shown on his face, because Sheril added, "And now we have you, Allen Walker. The catalyst behind my darling Road's disappearance. The host of our long-forgotten brother. Walking in like a lamb to the slaughter."

"Congratulations, you got me here," Allen said, trying to keep a level expression even as he reeled over Road's fate and Apocryphos' presence in the Ark. He could only hope these new variables wouldn't ruin the plan. Leveling his best glare at Sheril, Allen continued, "Now it's time to honor your end of the deal."

"Oh?" Sheril asked, sounding entirely too smug to pull off even mock curiosity. "And what deal was that, exactly?"

"If I came here, you'd let Lavi go," Allen said, scowling.

"Was that the deal?" Sheril asked Tyki, smirk firmly locked on his face.

"Nah," Tyki replied, stepping away from the table with a pastry in hand. He turned as he walked, facing Allen as he said, "If you remember, I only said that we'd definitely kill him if you didn't come. No one said anything about letting the baby Bookman go free."

Anger boiled in Allen's stomach. "You said—"

"I _said_ we won't kill him," Tyki repeated, rolling his eyes. "But if I'm being honest, I don't think Sheril's quite ready to give him up. We won him from Bookman fair and square, after all."

"I do enjoy my new pet," Sheril concurred. He ruffled Lavi's hair with one hand, nearly knocking his eye patch askew, but Lavi didn't react, his gaze still aimed at the ground. Now that Allen was closer, he could see that Lavi's jaw was tight, his gaze more focused than listless, and he wondered what sort of injuries the baggy suit hid to cause the clear pain etched across his face.

"He's not a _pet_ ," Allen snapped, fists clenching. His Innocence pulsed. "If you think I'm just going to leave him with you—"

"Ugh, I'm already bored with talking to you," Sheril interrupted. "So how about this: you let the Fourteenth out to play and I will let your boyfriend out of the chair. He can go waste away in his cell. It doesn't matter to me — Feedler's parasites will kill him within the week no matter what you do. Does that work? It's the best offer you're going to get."

Allen stalled at the sudden proposition, as paltry as it was. "What?"

"Let me be frank: I don't care about _you_ ," Sheril sneered, waving a free hand in his direction. The other hand was still lodged in Lavi's hair, jerking his head against the back of his chair. "I want to talk to my beloved _brother_ , whom the Earl misses so much. I'm just dying to meet him."

"He's not interested in meeting you," Allen lied, as if he couldn't still feel Nea's presence scraping the back of his mind. He didn't want to think about Feedler's parasites, not so soon after Chaoji, so he pushed the thought away and pressed again, "Even if I could get him to come out, I'm not doing anything until Lavi is safely out of here."

At the table, Devit gave a shriek of laughter. "He thinks he can _bargain—_!"

"—In the Ark, surrounded by six of us!" Jasdero agreed with equal glee. Feedler chortled across the table from them, though Wisely merely glared at them all, wincing at the noise.

Allen's lip twitched, but he kept his glare locked on Sheril.

"That's the deal. Lavi goes free—" A thought suddenly struck him, and Allen added, "— _with_ his Innocence, so he's not completely helpless—and I'll stay here and let you talk to Nea. Otherwise—"

"Otherwise _what_?" Sheril mocked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. He rolled his eyes. "I'll be honest, boy, I don't even know or care where Junior's Innocence ran off to."

"Oh, that?" Tyki interjected, with the air of a person only half paying attention. He dug into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a familiar black hammer. Allen's eyes went wide at the sight of Lavi's Innocence in Tyki's hand, so simple and innocuous despite everything that Allen now knew might be possible. He tried not to let the worry show on his face.

Tyki tossed the hammer to the ground without a second thought, shrugging. "Take it. It's practically falling apart now anyway."

He wasn't wrong. Allen could see cracks forming along the black material. When the hammer landed, a chunk broke off and crumbled into dust on the ground. Allen's heart panged at the thought of what it would take to force someone's Innocence to fracture like that without even fighting.

"So let him go," Allen tried again. "Open a door back to the meadow. Link can take him."

"What?" Link hissed. "No, I—"

Allen glowered at him, jaw set tight, and Link fell abruptly silent.

"Actually, I don't think I want to do that," Sheril replied. "I admire your passion, I really do, but I've grown pretty fond of having my own little Bookman puppet. He can even move like a real boy, see?"

Sheril gave a deft twist of his hand, untying the tightly wrapped scarf that pinned Lavi's wrists to the top of the throne. His arms dropped, but instead of falling limply in his lap, they hovered in midair and reached for the silverware at the place setting in front of him.

"What are you—" Allen started, before he caught sight of the faint glimmer of strands emerging from each of Lavi's forearms. There were threads piercing straight into Lavi's skin, pulling his hands through the air like a puppet on strings. His fork skewered a slice of meat on the plate and dragged it back toward his mouth with grotesque exaggeration, nearly flailing as it missed Lavi's mouth by a good foot and stabbed the meat into his shoulder instead.

"Oh, well," Sheril said with mock disappointment. "Bit of a learning curve."

He twitched his fingers. Lavi's hands returned to hover in front of him as the fork dislodged from his shoulder and clattered to the ground.

Allen gaped in horror. Lavi still didn't move, but his gaze had finally dragged up from the ground. He stared intensely at his hands, his jaw clenched shut against the pain.

"Stop it!" Allen snapped, anger searing his throat.

"Now why would I do that?" Sheril asked. He gestured grandly and Lavi stood up, more threads shimmering in the light. Each tiny movement reflected in Lavi's expression.

For a brief, agonizing second, Lavi actually looked at Allen, focusing like he had just now noticed him. He blinked, surprise flitting over his face for a moment before Sheril yanked him forward and pain overtook him again.

"You're hurting him, stop—!" cried Allen, his mind reeling as the situation quickly spiraled beyond his grasp. He took a step forward but halted, knowing that any attack would just create more chaos and Lavi could get hurt even more.

"That's kind of the point," Tyki said, having moved to stand behind Sheril.

"I've heard that our dear brother tends to emerge when you fight," Sheril explained, grinning at Allen's helplessness. "This isn't a negotiation, Allen Walker. If you're unwilling to bring the traitor Noah out on your own, then I suppose it'll be up to me to drag him out myself. Tell me, is it the stress that does it, or the anger?"

Without waiting for a response, Sheril twitched his fingers again and Lavi swiped a thin, sharp knife from the table setting. Before Allen could blink, Sheril forced Lavi to place the knife against his own throat.

"Still want to bargain?" Sheril taunted, as Allen froze in horror. "You could invite the Fourteenth out now, or we could find out ourselves if shock will do it. I'd be careful of the spatter, though. At this range, you'll probably get sprayed when he cuts his own throat."

Allen locked gazes with Lavi, the entire world narrowing down to the scene before him. A large bead of blood welled up beneath the blade as the knife began to press sharply into Lavi's neck. He stared back at Allen. His expression softened, something akin to relief sweeping away the pain, and Allen felt like there was a voice in the back of his mind screaming _no, no, no, NO—_

"It's quite sad," Sheril said, trailing a finger down the side of Lavi's face until it met with the blood. "It would have been fun to see how much more he could take."

"Urcanpy," Allen hissed, placing a hand in his pocket and gripping tight. "Do it _now_."

He hurled the golem into the air and a sudden flash blinded the room. In the chaos that followed, Allen tore open a new gateway overhead.

_When Nea explained making gateways from inside the new Ark, Allen had expected some sort of instruction process, like operating a machine. Instead, Nea just laughed, his tone holding a thread of condescension that Allen was quickly realizing never quite went away._

" _It's magic, kid," Nea said. "That's the beauty of the Ark, whether it's the original or a copy. I designed it. Or at least, the part of the Earl that resides in me did. With my presence, you don't have to find a key for the lock. You simply have to will the gate to open wherever you envision it. No matter what the Earl believes, the Ark will always belong to us."_

_Once Nea showed him how, sensing the magic felt as easy as breathing._

As the flash died down, the first thing Allen saw was a flood of Kanda's insects swarming through the gate Allen had opened above the banquet table. They struck Tyki with enough force that the Noah was blown backwards, too startled to phase or dodge.

A black blur bounded along the table as Crowley targeted Jasdero and Devit, eager for a second round against them. Wisely and Feedler scuttled back from the table, shouts of alarm on their tongues, but Kanda was already there to meet the latter, stabbing his katana through Feedler's back like he was made of paper. Feedler stumbled to the side, blood gushing from the wound as he scrambled toward Tyki.

For his part, Allen had used the few seconds of surprise to zip the gate shut behind Urcanpy once the golem flew through it. He summoned his sword, his white cape flowing behind him even as he felt Nea react to the surge of activating Innocence. He lunged at Sheril, who proved to be faster than Allen predicted. The Noah leapt behind the golden throne, dragging Lavi with him by the threads.

"Really?" Sheril cried, barking a laugh. "You're daring to attack us _here_?"

Allen said nothing, sweeping his sword around to slice at the puppeteer's strands, but his wrist jerked to a stop mid-swing, catching on a thread he hadn't seen. Allen snarled, using the momentum to try and kick at Sheril, but Lavi was suddenly between them, pulled against his will, and Allen twisted to avoid kicking him.

"Not quite," Sheril jeered, drawing Lavi back to stand flush against him as a human shield. There was a stain of red spreading across the collar of Lavi's shirt from the aborted execution, growing fast enough to be worrying. "Really, it's—"

His taunts were interrupted as Link threw a ward at his face, which exploded with a glow of magic a split-second later. Sheril stumbled back a step, long enough for Allen to sprint forward. He could feel the Innocence resonating through his sword as he thrust it forward, stabbing through Lavi to the real target behind him.

Sheril choked on air, facing twisting in agony as Allen's Sword of Exorcism bypassed Lavi like he wasn't even there, sinking deep into the demon behind. But before Allen could even consider how to grab Lavi and wield his weapon at the same time, a surge of dark energy blasted him back.

Allen landed roughly against the banquet table, sending food and platters clattering to the ground. He rolled off the table and stumbled to his feet, head spinning. By some miraculous effort, he had managed to keep a grip on his sword. A few feet behind him, Link dragged himself up, holding his ribs but otherwise intact. Allen looked around wildly until he spotted Lavi, collapsed on the floor near the head of the table. He wanted to help, but the sight of Sheril pinned him in place.

Sheril stood at the head of the table, leaning against the golden throne as blood gushed from a gash across his stomach. Allen flinched back at Sheril's expression. His eyes were nearly black with rage, dark power emanating from his hunched form as he pinned Allen with a vicious glare.

"That," Sheril snarled, "was a mistake, Allen Walker."

The power around Sheril started to radiate from his body, thin tendrils of black creeping out in all directions. Lavi was proven conscious when a ribbon of darkness brushed against his legs, making him wince and recoil as he struggled with the threads still piercing his skin.

Allen braced himself, eyes darting between Sheril's growing power and the rampage ensuing in the rest of the banquet hall. Kanda was locked in battle with Tyki, who dodged away as an injured Feedler waited for brief opportunities to strike. Crowley was well engaged with Jasdero and Devit, leaving Allen and Link to face the furious Sheril alone. Allen didn't know where Wisely had run off to, but he knew the longer they fought, the more likely it was that the other Noah in the Ark would come to help.

Allen glanced at Link, the only one who hadn't been part of the planning process, and hissed, "Help me grab Lavi! We have to go!"

Link stared at him. "Go _where_?"

But Allen had already turned away, hoisting his sword in a battle ready position. He could hold Sheril off long enough for Link to snag Lavi, and between the four of them, they might be able to make it back to the first gate in time for the second phase of the plan. His mind reeled with the possibilities, trying not to imagine the worst scenarios even as Crowley and Kanda each fought two opponents, while Sheril generated a building surge of demonic energy—

He had no idea how his fragmented attention somehow landed on Lavi.

Lavi, who had managed to crawl out of Sheril's range, limbs shaking with effort as he reached a hand out toward Allen—

No.

Lavi reached toward a small black hammer, lying forgotten on the floor beside the table. His Innocence.

Allen's eyes went wide— there was no way he'd be strong enough to help; activating the hammer could actually _kill him_ — but before Allen could react, Sheril's power fully unleashed.

His sword cut through the worst of the blast, but the sheer force of it drove Allen to his knees. Even shielded by Innocence, it felt like being overwhelmed by a swarm of spiders, all crawling and biting as tendrils of darkness lashed at him. He couldn't scream, couldn't shout, couldn't even breathe as the demonic energy seared against him. He could feel Nea reacting like a colony of ants crawling beneath his skin, itching with growing intensity to _let me out let me out LETMEOUT—_

Just as he was about to collapse, a pulse resonated through the blast.

It was just enough to shatter the power burning around Allen, leaving him gasping and braced against his sword. The world blurred. It took a few seconds to catch his breath, his limbs shaking as he willed the strength to maintain his grip over Nea. The ebb and flow of Innocence and Dark Matter was like a catalyst, drawing his inner Noah so close to the surface that for a few seconds Allen could hardly tell if he was still in control. On the ground beside him, Link curled on his side, trembling from the attack.

Just as he was settling, Allen felt another pulse of energy thrum through the air.

He looked up.

Sheril was walking toward him—no, toward Lavi.

Lavi sat on his knees, staring at a piece of Innocence floating in the air before his eyes. His expression was blank, like he couldn't quite piece together what had happened.

Oh, no.

_No_.

Allen had only seen Innocence crystalize once before, when a battered Lenalee had taken the risk for the chance to beat the Level Four akuma attacking the Order, but the sight was unmistakable. Any doubts were banished when Allen saw Kanda watching in alarmed recognition during a brief respite from battle, attention drawn by the pulse and held by the sight before him.

The Innocence in front of Lavi pulsed again, slow and steady. It didn't feel like any Innocence Allen had sensed before, warm and inviting and thudding with a familiar, rhythmic beat.

Almost like—

Before Allen could follow that thought, Sheril reached Lavi and curled a fist in his hair. The floating Innocence followed Lavi as his head jerked back. Sheril's side was wet with blood, but his eyes were bright. "What's this? Has your Innocence finally abandoned you, Junior?"

Lavi didn't say anything, gaze still locked on his Innocence. Fear flickered across his face. He'd been there when Lenalee's Innocence crystalized. He knew what it meant, even if Sheril didn't.

The sight of Sheril's hand twisted into Lavi's hair made Allen feel sick—it compounded against the alarm on Lavi's face.

"Leave him alone!" Allen said, staggering to his feet.

It was the wrong thing to say.

Sheril's eyes snapped to Allen. "Oh?" he asked, tightening his grip until Lavi arched back and grimaced, his hair pulled taut. "You seem worried, Allen Walker. I've never seen Innocence act like this before. Why is it making you so concerned?"

The Innocence drew closer to Lavi's mouth, following it like a moth drawn to a flame as it maintained its measured pulse.

" _You_ —," Allen began, unable to look away from the floating Innocence. He didn't remember Lenalee's Innocence pulsing like this. If Bookman was right, if Lavi's Innocence _was_ the Heart, what would that mean if it became a crystal-type? What would happen—

Sheril's eyes narrowed at Allen's hesitation. A smirk flitted across his lips.

"You know, I've heard stories of Innocence killing humans if they try to consume it," Sheril said, almost conversationally. "Never quite understood why your Order would keep trying it if that's all it did. But it wasn't the Order, was it? The Innocence decides for itself who to save and who to kill. Isn't that right?"

"What?" Allen asked, mind racing to try and follow how Sheril had drawn his conclusions. Sheril had it wrong, so terribly backward, but his eyes gleamed from the hidden knowledge he assumed he'd stumbled across.

"No, that— that was just the Order trying to force new Exorcists," Allen fumbled further, trying to explain. "Lavi's Innocence is already attached to him—"

"Then why do you look so afraid, Allen Walker?" Sheril cut in.

Allen waited a split second too long, unable to find an easy answer that wasn't the truth, and Sheril's lips split into a grin.

"I've always wanted to see what it looks like when Innocence kills a human. Wouldn't that be neat, Junior? To let it burn you alive from the inside?" Sheril mused, with a tone that suggested he really had considered it.

He gestured and Lavi's hands flew up to cup underneath the floating Innocence.

It liquefied instantly, pooling neatly in Lavi's hands. Lavi tried to jerk backward, his eye flying wide, but Sheril's threads held him frozen in place. Around them, the battle raged on, but none of the Exorcists were close enough to help.

"Oh, how convenient," Sheril murmured, smile growing broader as he drank in Lavi's panic. "Will it kill you slowly, like a good poison? I hope it makes you _suffer_ —"

"Stop!" Allen shouted, rushing forward in a desperate bid to intervene. He didn't know if Lavi was strong enough to withstand the change. And that wasn't even considering how crystal-type Innocence would bind Lavi to the Order, likely destroying his future as the Bookman forever. Given how Lavi was panicking, he had to know that just as clearly as Allen did.

A wall of Sheril's dark energy blasted Allen back. By the time he steadied himself, he only had enough time to look up before Sheril forced Lavi's cupped hands to his mouth, tilting his head back and watching with glee as Lavi drank his Innocence.

The pulse that followed sent shockwaves through the Ark.

Allen collapsed to his knees, feeling like he'd been knocked over by a bull. Around him, the rest of the Exorcists and Noah suffered the same fate. Sheril was blown back behind the banquet table, nearly taking out Tyki and Kanda together as he flew by.

The Ark trembled around them. Allen could feel it shaking down to its very foundations.

In the back of his mind, Nea screamed, clamoring so close to the surface that Allen nearly slipped away entirely. He screwed his eyes shut, forcing Nea back down from sheer terror.

The air pulsed again, centering in on Lavi.

He sat on his knees in a pool of blood, his visible eye shining with an inhuman white glow. Allen could barely look at him, the glare as sharp as the sun, but Lavi didn't move. He didn't even seem awake. As Allen watched, the blood took on a life of its own, building and swirling around Lavi until it encased him in a sphere of fine strings.

The blood paused for a moment, sharp against the bright glow surrounding Lavi, before settling along Lavi's side. The same bright glow in Lavi's eye began to shine just below his ribs in a crossed gash, its light still evident beneath Lavi's ill-fitting clothes.

The Innocence pulsed again, quicker this time. Allen could feel his own Innocence echo its beat as the air around Lavi seemed to vibrate. It fell into a familiar pattern, the deep _thu-thump_ echoing through the chamber until it was unmistakable.

Tyki, the only one of the Noah who had managed to catch himself before falling, stared with dawning recognition.

"The Heart," he said, voice just loud enough for Allen to hear.

Kanda, just now standing up with his sword in hand, glanced sharply at Tyki. Beside him, Sheril staggered to his feet, eyes locking on Lavi's frozen form. The shock on his face was quickly giving way to rage.

_Not this time, asshole._

"Kanda!" Allen shouted, hoisting his sword as he dashed toward Lavi.

Without missing a beat, Kanda whipped around and stabbed his katana deep into Sheril's side, neatly mirroring the gash caused by Allen's previous attack. Sheril screamed in rage, sending a wave of black tendrils gusting across the floor, but unlike before, Allen barely felt it. His Innocence wrapped tightly around him, bolstered by the Heart's presence as it diverted the dark blast.

He reached Lavi in seconds. The older boy was still on his knees, bathed in a white glow and staring at nothing.

"Lavi?" Allen asked, desperation clenching his chest.

Lavi didn't respond. The Innocence surrounding him was almost suffocating in its intensity as it sounded its steady beat. Bright light resonated from his eye and the unseen mark beneath his shirt, giving the impression that Lavi's body was nothing more than a shell covering a core of Innocence.

_He really is the Heart_ , Allen thought with an air of regret, taking a brief moment to absorb the change. Any hope Lavi had of rejoining Bookman would surely be shattered once the Order got hold of him.

"What now?" Link said, running up to Allen. He kept a pained grip on his ribs as he moved, but he held a ward at the ready.

Allen glanced at the battle behind him. Both Kanda and Crowley seemed to have found the same second wind as Allen, but it didn't change the fact that it was now five against two. Even as he watched, Allen could see Tyki maneuvering to corner Kanda, and Jasdero and Devit started rebuilding their illusions against Crowley. Allen couldn't see Feedler, but Sheril was already heading toward them, eyes vicious as they locked on Allen.

"Grab Lavi!" Allen instructed, holding his sword at the ready. Sheril was staggering, but Allen could see his Noah side bolstering his strength. The tendrils of darkness from before were even thicker, emanating from Sheril to snake along the floor in a growing swarm as he approached.

Link nodded, reaching toward Lavi, but Allen didn't even have time to turn away before Link bit back a curse.

"I can't touch him!" Link explained, holding out his blistered hands. He glanced behind Allen, seeing the approaching threat, and quickly commanded, "Switch!"

Allen didn't bother to argue. He re-integrated his sword, knowing he was going to need both hands to haul Lavi away, and refused to think about Link facing off against a blindly enraged Sheril.

Unlike with Link, the glow of Innocence surrounding Lavi didn't burn Allen. When Allen touched Lavi, it felt like the Heart Innocence was pulling him in. Warmth spread through him like sinking deep into a hot spring, his worries melting away. For the first time in months, every anxious thought was silenced and replaced with an overwhelming feeling of peace.

For a moment, Allen was a child again, caught in Mana's tight embrace and knowing for the first time ever that _this_ was what a family could be like—

_No_.

Allen gritted his teeth, fighting against the desire to lose himself in the sudden rush of memories. He grabbed Lavi's shoulder and shook it, shouting, "Lavi! Wake up! _Lavi!_ "

Lavi angled his head toward Allen, expression as blank as a statue. His visible eye glowed with such intensity that Allen winced.

"Lavi!" Allen said again, grabbing him by both shoulders. "Whatever's going on, you have to snap out of it! I can't carry you by myself, so just—"

A blast of dark energy exploded behind him, sending Allen crashing into Lavi. They hurtled to the ground, though the worst of the attack was dissipated by the Innocence surrounding Lavi. Allen raised his head to see Link stagger back, blood streaming down the side of his face.

Sheril approached through a cloud of dust, snarling, "The Heart is _ours_!"

"Link!" Allen shouted in concern, drawing up to his knees. Link ignored him, jaw clenched as he whipped another ward at Sheril. They both knew it wouldn't be enough, but Link's expression was resolute as he stood guard.

Allen wheeled back to Lavi in a panic, pulling him to his knees. "C'mon, wake up! You have to _move_!"

Lavi's brow furrowed. The glow of Innocence dimmed slightly.

Just then, a furious crash rattled through the Ark, its force slamming Allen into Lavi yet again, though this time he was able keep them both upright. He scrambled to his feet, turning to face whatever new attack Sheril was trying, only to see—

Everyone had been knocked to the ground. Half the room's wall was shattered to smithereens, littering the floor with shrapnel and plaster dust. In the center of the hole stood Apocryphos, staring directly at Lavi with a fanatic gleam in his eyes.

"The _Heart_ ," Apocryphos hissed. Allen could barely hear him over the ringing in his ears, but he'd had enough interactions with the creature to read his lips. Apocryphos watched Lavi like a starving man eyed a feast.

_So much for him being captured_ , Allen thought absently, staring in horror at the abomination among the broken remains of the wall. The power of the Heart activating must have given Apocryphos' power a boost as well, Allen realized, which only worsened the despair building in his mind. Everything had gone even more to hell than he had expected.

However, before Apocryphos could attack, an explosion erupted at his feet.

"Oh _hell_ no!" Devit shouted, hurling another bomb to throw the creature off. "Capturing you was enough of a headache the _first_ time!"

"Hee, eat shit!" Jasdero agreed, shadowing his brother.

Allen boggled for a split second at their unintentional assist, quickly reassessing how screwed they were. Everyone was still staggering to their feet, thrown by Apocryphos' abrupt arrival, and Allen took advantage of the chaos, shouting, "Crowley! Come help Link!"

Quick as a whip, Crowley bounded away from his earlier fight and ran toward Link, flanking Sheril as he got to his feet. Trusting them to cover him, Allen turned back toward Lavi, already bracing himself for the struggle.

He was surprised to see Lavi staring at him. The glow had completely dissipated, leaving him green-eyed and confused.

"…Allen?" Lavi asked, voice cracked and barely audible. He was far too pale. The gash on his neck still bled freely, staining his shirt a deep red.

"We have to go," Allen said, hauling the taller boy to his feet.

Lavi gaped, clearly unsure as he opened his mouth to respond, but the effort of standing proved to be too much. Before Allen could react, Lavi's knees gave out and he collapsed into Allen's arms, unconscious.

Allen cursed, struggling to adapt to his sudden burden. The months of captivity had left Lavi frail, but he was still a fair bit taller than Allen. There was no way Allen would be able to haul him out smoothly.

"Crowley!" Allen shouted for help. The older man turned, saw Allen's plight, and leapt away from Sheril just as Link snapped another ward in the Noah's direction.

As Crowley took on the role of holding Lavi, Allen said, "Go out the main doors, then down through the dungeon!"

He summoned his Innocence sword again, trusting Crowley's strength in hauling Lavi to safety. He turned as Crowley pulled Lavi away, launching forward just in time to block Sheril from landing a blow against Link.

"You will never escape!" Sheril snarled, whipping dark tendrils at Allen's face.

Allen cut them out of the air. "Just _watch us_."

Sheril summoned another bolt of black energy in response to the bravado. Allen felt a brief pang of regret as he braced himself, but a flurry of insects enveloped Sheril before he was able to unleash the blast.

" _Move_!" Kanda snapped, not bothering to pause as he ran past them. Behind him, Jasdero, Devit, and Feedler were struggling to contain a shrieking Apocryphos, who was scrambling to follow Crowley as he dragged the unconscious Lavi away.

Allen grabbed Link by the arm and followed Kanda without a word, desperation quelling even their rivalry. They rushed toward the door just as Crowley and Lavi disappeared down the stairs. Behind him, Allen could hear another crash as Apocryphos beat back his opponents, but he was more concerned about Sheril. Kanda's insects would only hold him for so long.

Just as they approached the door, Allen caught sight of Tyki standing near the doorway, in perfect position to watch both fights. Allen braced himself for an attack, knowing that every second counted in their escape, but Tyki just stared at them. He didn't move. He met Allen's gaze for a split second, expression cold and unreadable, before turning back toward the fight with Apocryphos.

He… was letting them go? It didn't make any sense. _Why—?_

Allen bit back his confusion, refocusing on their escape. They tore down the passageway, Link taking the lead as he recalled the path they'd followed to get there. They caught up with Crowley and Lavi halfway through the dungeons, but just as Allen glimpsed the exit, a familiar shriek of rage sounded behind him.

"Allen _Walker_!" screamed Sheril, fury so potent that it blistered Allen's back. He whipped around as he felt demonic energy building, meeting the blast with his sword just as it barreled down the hallway toward them.

He managed to stay on his feet, diverting the energy into the wall beside him and just barely avoiding being crushed by the collapsed stone. He could hear Sheril cursing through the dust, but he didn't have time to worry about that.

Allen turned away, running back to the others just as they reached the still-active Ark gate. With Sheril nipping at their heels, they charged through the exit—

—straight into the Embracing Garden, guarded by General Tiedoll.

The instant Allen emerged, Tiedoll dropped a curtain of vines, launching a fierce defense against Sheril's final strike. Clearly not expecting the support, Sheril was hit dead on by the blast of Innocence. He was blown back from the gate and into the collapsed dungeon.

Without missing a beat, Allen snagged the gate and focused his magic. The gate vanished in an instant.

"Go, go, _go_ —!" Kanda barked, urging them into the lush forest of Innocence. He grabbed Lavi's arm on the other side of Crowley, helping to haul their incapacitated comrade away. Even though Link held his ribs, he kept pace with Allen as they ran after the others, followed by General Tiedoll in support.

The rest of their escape flashed by in a haze. General Tiedoll had created a weaving maze of his Embracing Garden, not knowing what to expect when Allen made his escape. As it turned out, they had managed to make it out with surprisingly fewer pursuers than anyone had anticipated.

Still, it took time to dismantle the intricate forest, so Allen was breathless and exhausted by the time the woods around him dissolved and a familiar carriage formed before them. A few bewildering moments later, Allen found himself collapsed on the wooden floor, gasping for air. Link fell to the floor nearby, finally letting the pain of his broken ribs show on his bloodstained face.

General Tiedoll slumped into his seat at the front of the carriage, his jaw locked in concentration even as his hand trembled from the effort of keeping Maker of Eden active.

Allen moved to support the older man, recognizing the signs of Innocence strain. Belatedly, he remembered Lavi and arched his neck, straining to see past Crowley and Kanda as they knelt over him.

"Keep helping the General! We've got this!" Kanda instructed, noticing Allen's concern. He barely spared Allen a glance as he used a thick towel to put pressure on Lavi's neck wound. Beside him, Crowley hovered with bandages at the ready.

Something settled in Allen's chest, calming the worst of his worries. He sank back against the bench, keeping a steady grip on General Tiedoll and catching his breath as the Innocence carriage swept them away from the meadow yet again.

They'd won.

He couldn't calculate the costs just yet, as he stared back at Lavi lying motionless on the carriage floor, but Lavi was free. The Noah couldn't hurt him anymore.

Allen closed his eyes, clinging tightly to the feeling of victory for the first time in months – a bright spot in so much darkness. The breath he released felt like he'd been holding it that long.


	5. The Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: My turn again! Phew - this was a long one to round out Arc 1. It was fun (and challenging) to shift POV gears, but here we are ^_^ Before diving in, please note the following trigger warning:
> 
> TW: Panic attacks, flashbacks of torture and non-consensual contact of a non-sexual but invasive nature. Also still a lot of general creepiness and language, but that's nothing new.
> 
> Again, thank you to those who have left kudos or comments; for those who might have been waiting for a stopping point, please let us know what you thought, as this is the last chapter of Arc 1! The next installment, "Interlude: Junior" between Arc 1 and Arc 2 is a MASSIVE undertaking that's still in progress with panaili/beta-roomie, so there will be a longer-than-usual wait time before that story is posted. It will be a standalone one-shot fic, but part of the Third Side series.

The Aftermath

Lavi opened his eyes to near darkness. That was all one half of his vision ever saw, but the other eye darted around in mild panic. He sucked in a sharp breath, muscles tensing on reflex – it was never good when he woke up somewhere new.

His ears strained for signs of his captors, but it was quiet.

After a few long moments, Lavi released his breath again. Nothing moved in the dim lighting, and slowly, his locked muscles began to relax just enough for the fear to ebb away.

_Everything_ hurt. Granted, it was a dull ache compared to the memories that began to filter through the haze of exhaustion – vivid images that had morphed into even more vivid nightmares, the sinister faces of his tormentors causing him to break out in a cold sweat. Sheril and Tyki were demons to rival even Road. Cutlery and chains, beatings and stabbings and gut-wrenching pain all flashed through his mind, along with the image of Bookman's cracking façade of indifference as he'd been forced to watch.

Lavi had fought not to scream or cry – the sounds seemed to have the worst effect on his master, and he knew as well as Bookman that giving in was not an option. He had bitten through his lip or tongue multiple times in his effort to stay silent, though in the end that hadn't mattered at all.

At some point, Bookman had vanished. Lavi didn't know why, but suddenly his master was gone, and rounds of torture became more sporadic, as did consciousness in general. Those conscious moments often came with the startling wake-up call of a cold hosing down, after which Lavi was left to waste away under the constant sensation of near-drowning that left him wondering exactly when his lungs might lose the ability to take another breath.

If he could believe Sheril, Feedler's parasites were to blame. They were like nothing Lavi had ever experienced, leaving him helpless to move, fight back, or even swallow meager offerings of food and water without choking. His stomach had gnawed at him, seeming to consume itself.

And now, he remembered the banquet – being tossed around like a puppet before he was served up his Innocence and somehow kept _that_ down. His mind was almost blank after it happened. There had been a flash of an unfamiliar scene, a shining tree in a golden field that shimmered like a dream. The only other thing he could recall was a brief image of Allen's face, twisted in fear as he shouted his name and pulled him to his feet. But after that—

Nothing.

The blank spot in his memory was almost as frightening as what he _did_ remember. Bookmen did not forget. The crystal clarity of his entire ordeal with the Noah was evidence enough to that, but it was the missing piece of memory that made panic start to rise again in his throat.

His heartbeat echoed in his ears. It sounded odd, though. Deep and heavy, vibrating through every fiber of his being.

The sensation was strange enough to distract him from his missing memories. Lavi knew Sheril had forced him to drink his Innocence, in similar fashion to what Lenalee had done – that moment stood out sharply in his mind before the memories stopped.

_What else is different about me now?_

As the panic began to subside, Lavi was able to ascertain that he was lying in a bed, unshackled, and the only notable smell in the space was that of disinfectant. Patches of moonlight caught on a clear bag and metal stand near his head, and he could only assume the IV was sending pain medicine through his veins to keep the worst effects of his injuries at bay.

Once his eye tracked down to where the IV met his left hand, it landed on a mass of silvery white pillowed on a dark arm against the mattress.

Allen was there, fast asleep.

Or so he thought. Lavi hadn't fully dismissed the possibility of this being a hallucination or a trick. It had happened with the Noah a few times, though never as convincingly as this.

It took more effort than it should have, but Lavi managed to drag his hand the few inches required to touch that feather-soft hair. It spilled loosely over Allen's arm, much longer than Lavi remembered from before. He took a deep breath of relief and closed his eyes. This was real. Wherever he was, it had to be safe.

"Lavi?"

Allen raised his head, blinking sleep from his eyes before a cautious smile broke across his face. Even half obscured in shadow, it was the most beautiful thing Lavi had seen in what felt like forever, and he let himself stare without bothering to clamp down on his feelings for once. To replay that smile in memory had nothing on reality.

He didn't get to bask in it long, though, before worry troubled his friend's expression. Allen took hold of his fingers, careful of the IV attached.

"How are you feeling?" Allen nearly whispered, and Lavi wondered if others might be sleeping close by. "I can let Jo know if you need more medicine. She's the one who set all of this up."

"Nah, I'm good," Lavi rasped. He made a weak attempt at a grin. "Just stay here, 'kay?"

That smile returned, warmer if a little strained. "Of course. Where else would I go?"

"That depends. Where's the food?"

The joke fell flat. Allen dropped his eyes to the mattress, squirming in place. "Can't say I've had much of an appetite," he muttered, and when he lifted his face again, it was steeled with resolve. "Either way, I'm not letting you out of my sight."

Lavi took a long moment to absorb that declaration. Grotesque memories from the banquet still swirled near the surface of his mind, thoughts of Allen's tormented face or desperate cries along with them. But as harrowing as Sheril's puppeteer act must have been to witness – it had certainly been horrific to _experience_ – it felt like there was more going on here.

Something just seemed off.

Now was not the time to delve, however, and Lavi doubted he could hold out for long anyway. Exhaustion still weighed on his limbs and eyelids.

"Whatever you want," he croaked, trying and failing to stifle a yawn. He managed a smirk. "Not much to look at right now, but I feel special."

Allen snorted. "Idiot. You should."

The smile was back again. Lavi finally closed his eyes and let himself slip away.

* * *

"' _The Bookman has no need of a heart,'" a chiming voice echoed in Lavi's mind. It spoke in a language he instinctively knew but could not name._

_Lavi opened his eyes. Golden fields stretched away in every direction, with no sign of civilization in sight. Was this a dream? A memory? He had glimpsed this place before – in the banquet hall after the Innocence had slipped down his throat._

_A massive tree stood before him bearing silver leaves, its brightness eclipsing the only other thing in the field – a smaller, twisted shadow of a tree in the near distance. The smaller tree was withered and barren, a dark reflection of its lush counterpart._

_The voice seemed to be coming from inside the luminous tree. "Do you believe those words?"_

" _Who's asking?" Lavi challenged. He took a tentative step forward. Given the previous circumstance, he wondered if it was his Innocence somehow talking to him – though the tree form seemed nothing like his hammer, and it was odd to be hearing Bookman's words._

" _Who I was is of no consequence," the voice replied. The leaves shimmered as it spoke again. "I am a part of you, now. So I ask again – do you believe the mantra of the Bookman Clan? Do you even understand it?"_

" _I-I thought… I did," Lavi stammered. His gaze fell to the roots of the tree. "It's about objectivity, keeping bias out of our records. Human attachments would skew them, so we can't afford to have a 'heart.' Isn't that right?"_

" _That is the tradition, yes," the voice replied. "But that is not the full intent of the mantra."_

_Lavi's head snapped up. He stared at the tree for several seconds, his mind fighting to process what other possible meaning there could be. His thoughts were a blank page._

" _Then what_ is _the intent?"_

_A mild wind rippled the golden grasses and set the leaves shivering._

" _The Bookman has no need of a heart," the voice said, "because the Heart is already your inheritance."_

" _You mean… the Heart of Innocence?" Lavi asked. "Does my master have something to do with it? Or the Clan?"_

_The wind intensified, whipping through the branches and battering Lavi in a whirlwind of silver. A throbbing energy pulsed from the tree and resonated with his entire being._

" _It is_ your _inheritance."_

_A sudden gust blew Lavi backward into the tall golden grass. Its feathery blades cushioned his fall and surrounded him, electric sensations whispering along his skin. The very roots in the ground beneath him pulsed a slow rhythm in time to his own heart._

" _It is yours…"_

* * *

The blinding light of morning hit Lavi full force. He groaned and threw an arm over his watering eye, hissing when the motion pulled at multiple bandaged wounds.

"I'd keep still, stupid rabbit," Kanda's voice snapped from nearby. "My blood transfusion yesterday could only do so much." The swish of fabric and sudden dimming of light from the window brought a weary grin to Lavi's face.

"Thanks a ton, Yuu," he croaked, letting his arm fall away. His eye adjusted to the more tolerable lighting to take in as much of the room and its other occupants as possible.

Allen had not left his post, his face just within reach. He drooled a little bit onto the covers, still sleeping soundly despite the rumbling noises of protest from his stomach. It was difficult to resist the urge to ruffle his hair, but Lavi forced himself to move along. He spied Link leaning against the wall nearby, warily eyeing them both over the rim of his teacup.

Across the room, though, Crowley and Johnny all but leaped for joy when Lavi's gaze landed on them. As one, they rushed to the bedside, their words tripping over each other as they both gushed with greetings and exclamations of relief. General Tiedoll followed them as well, managing to smile through clear exhaustion. Someone else approached from behind Lavi and placed a hand on his forehead.

"Feeling up to an extra pillow?" the woman, Lavi assumed Jo, asked. "Just to prop you a little bit."

Lavi shrugged and winced yet again. "Sure, why not?"

While Jo enlisted Crowley to help her make the adjustment, Johnny took the initiative to shake Allen's shoulder. "Hey, Allen! C'mon, Lavi's awake!"

Groaning and swatting at Johnny's hand, Allen dragged his head up from the sheet. He squinted at Lavi and smothered a yawn. "Hey. Sorry about all this racket…"

When Allen tried and failed to keep a smile, Lavi sensed a faint tinge of guilt to the aura surrounding his friend – as if he were somehow personally responsible.

"No way," Lavi rasped. "I haven't seen friendly faces in, uh—"

He stopped, his gaze briefly fixed on the ceiling while he considered how long he'd been held captive. Time had ceased to be relevant in the Ark as the days blurred into an ebb and flow of endless pain. "How long was I in there, exactly? And— and what about…"

He trailed off, his chest tightening at the thought of his master's fate. Did he escape? Did the Noah get what they wanted and let him go? Or did they break all the rules and dispose of him? An apprentice was nothing, but to kill the _Bookman—_

No matter the reality, he had to know. Lavi licked his cracked lips and swallowed the fear, looking at the group surrounding him for possible clues. Steeling his tone, he asked, "What about Gramps?"

Allen opened his mouth, casting around for words, but the creak of the door cut off any comment he was going to make.

"I see you've pulled through with your nicknaming penchant intact," Bookman suddenly replied, and Lavi rolled his head toward the voice coming from his blind side.

The old man was in a wheelchair lined with cushions and pushed by a young girl. He was a withered husk of his former self, but alive and functioning enough to be seated upright in the wheelchair. His sharp eyes bored into Lavi's face, searching and studying his condition.

Lavi swallowed down the burning lump in his throat. "Damn straight, old panda."

" _The Noah held you for four months. We have a great deal to discuss,"_ Bookman communicated to his mind, not even batting an eye at the shift. The tone of his thoughts was even as usual, as if he had commented on a stint of bad weather.

" _Now?"_ Lavi thought in response. His entire body ached under the strain of recovery, his mind barely able to muster the energy for consciousness. Many record-worthy things could have transpired in four months' time. It was exhausting to consider.

" _No, not now. When we are alone. This is not for the ears of our present company."_

Dread made the exhaustion sink harder into Lavi's bones. For a moment, his heart pounded in his ears, a telling reminder of just how much they needed to discuss.

" _Oh good,"_ Lavi thought, his eyes beginning to droop. _"I feel a nap coming on."_

Despite his impassive expression, an immense weight was settled behind Bookman's gaze. Something akin to sadness.

"…I am glad you survived, Lavi."

"Hey, I've got too much to live for."Lavi cracked a half-hearted smile, allowing his eyes to finally close as he sank back against his pillows.

"All right, everyone," Lavi heard Jo huff. "Let's give him some privacy and space to rest. I need to run diagnostics. Go on, clear the room."

"Can I just go back to sleep? I won't be a disturbance," Allen tried to bargain, the mattress bouncing slightly as he apparently planted his head again.

"If you're staying, I have to keep my post," Link insisted.

"Then I'm still standing guard," Kanda declared. "I don't trust either of you."

Allen's muffled voice sounded from against the mattress, "Could you _not_ be such an asshole right now—?"

Jo growled in exasperation. "No exceptions! Everyone out! I am handling medical procedures and he deserves the common decency to have this room cleared. Now, shoo!"

The sheet shifted as Allen left, still whining, while Crowley and Johnny chuckled at the exchange. Gradually, Lavi heard them all head for the door.

His mind drifted away to the sounds of sighs and shuffling feet, like wind whispering out of the room.

* * *

When Lavi next woke, his body was stiff and his mouth felt like a desert, as if he hadn't moved in ages. He pried his eyes open against the accumulated crust.

By the slant of low light from the window, it had to be evening. Allen had reclaimed his post, nearly falling off his chair as he snoozed against the bedside, but now a small golem flitted around his head. It looked like a black version of Timcanpy, whose absence suddenly struck Lavi. Allen and his golem had been inseparable.

Johnny hovered at the end of the bed with a clipboard in hand, eyes bright behind his spectacles as he scoured whatever information was on the papers. The young girl from before stood fidgeting next to him.

"I don't think Jo would want you snooping through her notes," she complained.

Johnny tutted at her claim, waving a dismissive hand. "Lavi's _our_ friend. If she wanted to keep his medical stuff secret, she shouldn't have stashed her clipboard in the dresser."

"Maybe she expected you'd have the courtesy to not snoop _there_ , either."

Lavi cleared his throat. "Heya, Johnny."

The scientist nearly jumped out of his skin. "You're awake again!" he whisper-shouted, scuttling over to pat Lavi's head.

"Got any water?" Lavi croaked.

The girl appeared again, handing off a half-full glass to Johnny.

"I'm Lucia, by the way," she explained. "Jo's assistant."

Lavi tried to smile, nodding in acknowledgment. Lucia stepped away, while Johnny helped him to drink the water before returning to the clipboard of medical notes.

"So what's the verdict?" he asked Johnny. "Don't think I lost any body parts. Right?"

Considering Tyki's involvement as one of his Noah captors and the man's grotesque track record of removing miscellaneous organs, Lavi wasn't so confident. He was pretty sure his vital parts were intact, but for all he knew, he could have been missing a kidney or something and simply not have noticed it yet. The thought sent a chill down his spine.

Johnny just stared at him for a few beats, but he shook himself and stammered, "N-no, ah, that's exactly what we all wanted to avoid. That is, you definitely didn't _lose_ anything. You're in much better shape than yesterday, actually." A wide smile began to spread over his face. "Thanks to Kanda's transfusions, your wounds are healing up at top speed. Besides that, the parasites are _gone_. There's no trace of any foreign pathogen. You've got your Innocence to thank for that, of course. It's all so incredible. We had no idea what to expect—"

"Stop yammering, science geek," Kanda growled from somewhere near the door.

Johnny snapped his mouth shut, ducking behind the clipboard. "Sorry. Maybe you should go back to sleep, Lavi. I-I hope you don't mind me reviewing your medical info, but we were all really curious about how much progress you were making."

With a hoarse laugh, Lavi replied, "Far be it from me to come between you and paperwork."

"'Better to ask forgiveness,' hm?" Lucia grumbled. She scuttled closer to where Allen slept, beckoning at the golem circling him. "Come on, Urcanpy. Let's get dinner."

But the golem merely nested itself in Allen's hair, giving a dismissive flap. Lucia glared at Urcanpy and pouted. "Fine, you lazy traitor. Take a nap then." She turned on her heel and left the room in a huff.

"Tim?" Allen groaned, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. He groped at the top of his head, finally patting the small golem. It nipped his finger and lifted off again, hovering over the bed in full view.

Allen sank in his seat, dragging a hand down his face. Quietly, he muttered to himself, "Idiot. He's not coming back."

His eyes drifted over to Lavi, clearly not expecting to find him awake. For the split second before Allen forced another smile, Lavi could not mistake the grief written on his face.

"Hey, Al," he tried, walking his fingers over the covers to find Allen's hand. "What do you mean, he's not coming back?"

"Tim was…" Allen began, swallowing thickly as his eyes fell to the bed. "Destroyed."

Lavi had a flash of horrific thought – that Timcanpy could have perished in the Ark, a tragic sacrifice of his rescue operation. But there was no way to tell from the pain in Allen's voice – it would have sounded fresh no matter when it happened. Timcanpy had been Allen's most faithful companion.

"What happened?" Lavi asked simply.

"We were hunted down by Apocryphos, that—that _monster_ from the Ark, a couple of weeks ago, and Tim defended me. Then it… must've done something horrible to him. All I have left is a jar of ashes," Allen said, his voice smaller by the second. "I wasn't _there_. Apocryphos had murdered my master before it came after me in prison the first time, and Link nearly died so I could escape. I was on the run for months. When it caught up to us again, it annihilated Tim, who was also stalling so I could escape. Now, that thing is after _you—_ "

Allen's voice caught in his throat, as if he couldn't or wouldn't go on. It left Lavi to wonder just how much he had missed. Was this terrible creature after Innocence? Did it somehow answer to the Order? It couldn't be a Noah or an akuma, or Allen would have called it as much. And why would it switch targets in the Ark if it had been chasing Allen, who was right there?

Vaguely, on the edges of Lavi's blank memories after swallowing his Innocence, he did recall sensing a presence. A foreign entity leeching on the surge of power that flooded out of him. But he could only picture Allen's face before he had passed out again. He had not seen Apocryphos and could not envision the monster at all.

The fear in Lavi's chest morphed again, settling on this unknown adversary, and he shoved it deep into the furthest recesses of his mind. He squeezed Allen's hand as best he could. He wanted to tell him to stop beating himself up, that he couldn't expect to be everywhere and save everyone, but that just felt wrong. True, but cold.

Allen had obviously been through the wringer since Lavi last saw him.

Lavi took a deep, pained breath against some of his still-injured ribs. "I'm sorry."

"Things could be worse," Allen said, mustering a half-hearted smile in return. His stomach interrupted with a drawn-out grumble, shattering the moment.

Snorting, Lavi teased, "What gives? You skip dinner?"

Johnny shot a telling look at Allen, who just sat back in a huff, arms crossed.

"Don't worry about me. It's not a big deal."

"It is if I'm about to be subjected to weird noises all night," Lavi quipped.

"Hey rabbit, you've got a visitor," Kanda suddenly announced. He wheeled Bookman into the room and positioned him beside the bed near Johnny.

One glance from his master was enough to remind Lavi of their last unspoken conversation. Realizing what the old man's arrival meant, Lavi felt his guts sink into the bed. He had failed in his duties as a Bookman by swallowing his Innocence – a subject they would no doubt address. Still, he had to weigh his options. Bookman needed to discuss some important information with him alone, after all, and delaying might only make everything worse.

Lavi grinned up at the scowling swordsman. "Yuu, think you could do me a favor?"

Kanda rolled his eyes. "You're really going to milk this recuperation period, huh. What is it this time?"

"Allen skipped dinner," Lavi explained. "D'you mind escorting him to the nearest kitchen? Take Johnny, too – these guys are so busy fussing over me they're about done in. They need like a good hour or two away from this room. I mean, just look at 'em. It's depressing." He made a short but significant glance at Bookman, ignoring Allen's slack-jawed expression of betrayal and Johnny's abashed face before looking back at Kanda.

With a noncommittal grunt, Kanda just walked around the bed and snatched Allen's arm. "You heard him. Time to go, beansprout."

"I'm fine!" Allen protested, trying to jerk away, but his stomach immediately growled like the hungry beast within might attack at any moment. Kanda hauled him out of the chair and snagged Johnny on the way toward the door.

Allen still squirmed against his hold. "Hey, let me go you dumbass, I can _walk_ —!"

"Why me?" Johnny whined, dragging his steps. "I'm not even hungry!"

Link trailed after them, muttering something about the utter lack of baking supplies to work with in this place.

"Shut up, all of you!" Kanda shouted. "It's dinner, not a life sentence!"

* * *

As their footfalls and voices died away, Bookman narrowed his dark eyes at Lavi.

"Your friends are an unruly bunch. Yet you seem to think they are worth the trouble."

Lavi fought to keep his features as blank as his master's. "They think _I'm_ worth the trouble, after all."

"Lavi is worth it, you mean," Bookman replied. "Though I suppose you will be Lavi from this point on. You must have realized by now that consuming your Innocence would mean the end of your apprenticeship."

It choked him, the gall burning up his throat at hearing those words, but Lavi swallowed down his hurt and disappointment. "That did cross my mind. It wasn't even my _choice_ , though. They must have told you—"

"That Sheril forced it on you? Yes, they did. That does not change the current situation."

"Couldn't I hide it?" Lavi tried, grasping at any alternatives. "Just not tell the Order that my Innocence crystallized, fly under their radar, finish this war, and live with the Innocence inside? I know it might shorten my lifespan, but I should still have enough time to find a successor…"

Slowly, Bookman shook his head. He sagged in his wheelchair, as if the weight of history was bearing down on his body. "You will be lucky to survive this war. There is nowhere you can hide for long. Not now."

"You mean because of that thing—Apocryphos, right? Allen said it was targeting us," Lavi said, clinging to a thread of hope that he might miraculously pull a solution out of the hat. "But I find it hard to believe some monster chasing Innocence is anything outside the norm. Just another nightmare to face, like the Earl and the Noah."

"Do not make light of this," Bookman warned. "Apocryphos is a creature of legend. A lethal independent-type Innocence that serves a singular purpose."

He reached out a wrinkled hand, lifting the edge of Lavi's thin shirt to expose the large bandage on his lower ribs. Bookman hovered his palm over Lavi's chest and called the needles of Heaven's Compass to life at his fingertips. Sweat trickled past his temple as he concentrated on keeping his Innocence active, long enough for a warm, thudding pulse to hammer against Lavi's chest from the inside out. The wound in his side seared to life as a brilliant glow leaked through the severed skin, burning a stigmata-like cross shape into the bandage covering it until the gauze completely disintegrated.

Seconds later, Bookman called off his activation. He sank even deeper into his seat to take a few rattling breaths. The reaction faded from Lavi's body as quickly as it had begun, leaving him winded, electrified and baffled.

"Lavi," Bookman rasped. "Apocryphos is after the Heart of Innocence. _Your_ Innocence. Only the Heart is capable of resonating with other forms of Innocence in the manner I've just demonstrated."

All the air left Lavi's lungs. "Mine?"he barely managed to gasp. "No, that can't be right. _You_ said it might be Allen's or Lenalee's, a-and that we had to keep a close eye on them, so that's just… not possible."

But his mind instantly returned to the tree in his dream. Its silver leaves swirled through his chaotic thoughts while the voice chimed its message.

" _It is your inheritance."_

The unmistakable regret in Bookman's eyes shattered Lavi's hopes as the truth hit its mark – his future as the next Bookman, and inevitably his life, was over. The Order, the Noah, a sentient Innocence monster, and who knew what other forces wanted to get their hands on the weapon housed within his body. He would be hunted. Used. Maybe reduced to a heap of ashes for Allen to mourn, like Timcanpy.

And this was his _inheritance_? It sounded more like a death sentence.

A frantic desire to examine the whole circumstance still managed to claw its way to the surface of Lavi's mindscape, creating a hurricane of questions. What could he do? Where would he go? How did this happen? Who figured it out, and how many people knew?

Was _this_ the reason his friends risked their lives by coming straight into the Ark against all good sense? Not to save Lavi, but for the Heart?

The gravity of that single idea bore down on his chest with crushing force. Combined with the weight of his failure, intentional or not, it became harder and harder to breathe.

A nearby monitor beeped loudly – something attached to him, Lavi distantly registered – giving audible form to his distress. Jo came charging into the room not a minute later. She wasted no time in fixing a clear mask over his face. Lavi found his panicked breaths a little more productive, but his heart continued to race while she checked his pulse, his temperature, his IV, and anything else available.

Jo grumbled to herself and shot a sharp glance at Bookman in accusation. It dissolved quickly at the sight of the old man, whose unshakable mask of stoicism had shattered beyond recognition.

"Try to calm down, kid," Jo sighed, patting Lavi's head. "Where'd your friends head off to?"

"Dinner," Lavi said. It was all he could do to form the word.

"All right. Well, I'll track them down. As for you," Jo said, moving to Bookman's wheelchair, "you're going straight to bed. I don't know what you were up to, but you're in no condition to push yourself like this."

As she wheeled him away, Bookman called back weakly, "I am sorry, Junior."

Alone in the dark room, Lavi clutched at the sheet over his pounding heart. The surge of intermingled emotions churned in his stomach and constricted his throat as he lay there pathetically. He was more trapped now than he had been in the Ark's filthy cell, tied down by invisible chains to a destiny he did not choose.

He would never be Junior again.

Voices reached him from the hall as Jo returned with the others, but Lavi could not face them now. He closed his eyes and forced a false calm onto his body borne of over a decade's worth of training, pretending to sleep instead.

"…don't advise leaving him completely alone," Jo was saying as they entered.

"Well, damn. Looks like he passed out already," Kanda muttered. "No surprise there."

Lavi felt a cool hand rest upon his. Allen. "Panic attacks are exhausting. You won't be dragging me off again any time soon, by the way. This isn't a bar, and you're not cut out to be a bouncer." The chair scraped along the floor as he settled back in at the bedside.

"Fuck off, beansprout. It wasn't my idea," Kanda hissed.

"You two need to get it together," Jo warned. Unless Lavi's ears deceived him, she had just cracked her knuckles. "Close friends or otherwise, I will kick you _both_ out if you can't shape up. Now, I need to go check on my other patient. Goodnight."

"Yeah, see you guys tomorrow… I'll just be down the hall," Johnny yawned, his footsteps retreating after Jo's.

Lavi listened and waited. Waited until someone – Link, he guessed – snuffed out the remaining candlelight, until Kanda halted his pacing steps near the door, until Allen's hand slipped away in his sleep. Silence engulfed the room.

Only then did the tears come.

* * *

_Once again, Lavi stared down the ethereal tree in his dreamscape field. This tree that somehow represented his Innocence._

_The Heart. The beginning of his end._

_As his thoughts of failure and helplessness boiled within, storm clouds began to gather overhead, casting the bark and leaves of the tree in a cold, steely gray, and the dry husks of grass rattled in the wind. Lightning tore through the charged atmosphere._

" _Do you reject me?" the voice whispered past his ear, cold and hollow._

_Lavi knew a threat when he heard one, in a dream or otherwise._

" _No," he breathed. This was still_ his _Innocence, even if it was the Heart. He focused his haphazard thoughts, aligning them onto a logical track. "I'm… confused. How can the Heart be my inheritance as a Bookman, if it means I can't succeed the Bookman at all?"_

" _You will see, in time. I cannot trust you with more."_

_Lavi threw out his arms. "Oh, you can't trust me? Trust is a two-way street!"_

_A massive flash of lightning rent the sky in a straight line to the tree. Its bark glowed white-hot but did not burn, seeming to channel the energy outward until the grass caught fire, and a wall of flame encircled Lavi with his Innocence._

" _Do not presume to place us on equal ground, human."_

_Searing heat began to lick at his boots, creeping up his clothing, and Lavi cracked a smile at the sudden wash of morbid nostalgia. Hadn't he once resolved to end himself in this way? To burn himself out like a firebomb to the enemy, if it meant his friends lived on?_

" _Been there, heard that one before," he ground out, clenching his fists against the familiar pain. "Believe me. I may be less than happy with this arrangement, especially since it's wrecking my life, but I know this war needs to end. The Earl and the Noah have to be stopped. I don't intend to give up on that goal."_

_In an instant, the flames receded. Low rumbles of thunder echoed across the sky._

_A few stray raindrops tapped across Lavi's skin, gradually advancing to a soft, steady shower. It doused the fire, and the tree's intrinsic glow refracted the drops to form a rainbow overhead._

" _We are in agreement, then."_

* * *

Lavi was roused to consciousness by shuffling movement around his body on the bed and the sudden exposure to cool air as the sheet was moved. His muddled brain struggled to awaken the rest of him, tripping a warning when he registered weight on his thighs. His eyes shot open at the rough touch of alien fingers against his neck.

It was not yet dawn, given the dim light playing on what should have been a friendly face. Allen hovered over him, but—No. Those were _not_ Allen's eyes burning into his face, a fiery gold with murderous intent.

And that was _not_ Allen's smile. That twisted smirk said everything even before the Allen impostor opened his mouth.

"So _you're_ the one," he said, and Lavi's blood ran cold at the ice in that unfamiliar voice. He froze in panic, his throat closing up at the pressure against it and the full realization of what was happening.

This was a Noah. The infamous Fourteenth. And he stood no chance.

" _What if I just played around a little?"_ A whispered memory struck him without warning: the weight of someone on top of him, gold eyes flashing with malice, creeping touches _inside him_ —

Lavi gasped sharply, tensing further at the memory, and the Noah released Lavi's neck to smother his mouth instead. He leaned close to Lavi's ear.

"You ruined everything," he whispered. His other hand skimmed up the side of Lavi's torso until he stopped at the large, scabbed area where the crystallizing blood had burst free. "But don't worry, I won't kill you, Heart-bearer. I won't let you out of my sight."

Lavi's stomach gave a violent churn. Those fingers traced the shape of the cross-like wound on his left side, and Lavi half expected the Noah to simply tear into his body with his bare hand.

He squeezed his eyes shut, weakly grasping at the mattress. Blood rushed in his ears and a deafening pulse reverberated through his whole being as he braced for pain.

But the Fourteenth just made shushing noises, a mocking placation, and lifted his hand from the wound. Lavi opened his eyes in time to see him pull a glove out of Allen's pocket. He removed his other hand from Lavi's mouth for a brief moment, only to shove the glove into it as a makeshift gag. Unnaturally long nails raked across Lavi's scalp as the Fourteenth pushed the hair from his face.

"That's better," he said with a smirk, golden eyes narrowing as they examined Lavi closely. After a brief pause, the Noah murmured, "You look… familiar." He ran a fingertip along the eyepatch strap. "Too familiar."

The Fourteenth pressed both hands to the sides of Lavi's head, turning it back and forth. He wasn't really making sense to Lavi, but every word and detail was etched into his brain nonetheless.

The Noah chuckled darkly to himself. "Uncanny," he muttered. "I knew that killjoy Bookman had taken in another red-headed hooligan, but then I thought to myself, why the hell _would_ he—"

Something in his expression snapped. The cruel smile dropped, and a crazed gleam flickered in his eyes.

"No. _No_. That bastard," he growled. "Cross planned this all along. He kept it—"

The Fourteenth's shoulders began to shake. He pushed himself away from Lavi's face, clenching his right hand on the shoulder of Allen's Innocence arm.

"He kept it in the _family_."

The last word was punctuated with a swift backhand that cracked across Lavi's cheek, following through to upset his IV stand. The tubing ripped from his hand, shooting fire up his arm as metal and plastic parts clattered on the floor. Wincing and paralyzed with fear, Lavi tried to shut out reality before the inevitable next blow.

But it never came.

He heard a dull thump and a pained gasp. The crushing weight on him fell away. Feeling returned to his now-aching legs.

When Lavi dared to open his eyes, Kanda towered above the bed. He flexed his fingers and cast a brief glance toward the floor.

"He's out cold," Kanda clipped, replacing the sheet over Lavi and removing the glove from his mouth in one fluid motion. Lavi coughed, bringing a hand to his throat as he struggled to calm the frantic beat of his heart. He couldn't quite keep himself from shaking.

Kanda paused as he noticed Lavi's reaction, but he didn't show any expression other than a slight tightening of his jaw. Instead, he focused on righting the medical equipment, catching sight of Lavi's bleeding hand and torn out IV. Brusquely, Kanda said, "I'll get Jo."

Before Lavi could even find his voice, Link had also rushed across the room, checking Allen's body and applying a number of warding seals on him as a precaution.

So, the Fourteenth knew.

Lavi wondered if he would ever sleep again.

* * *

Allen hardly spoke for over a week. Although he remained in the vicinity, he gave Lavi a wide berth and made himself scarce for extensive chunks of the day. Lavi noted that he stuck closer to Link than before and insisted on the use of talismans at night. For obvious reasons.

Still, it was miserable to watch his friend withdraw so deeply into himself, especially when Lavi's own movement and energy was limited as he healed. Crowley and Johnny hung around at intervals and tried to fill the gap with chatter on every topic possible – up to and including a variety of carnivorous plant discovered on the premises, which inevitably brought up the tale of Crowley's castle and circled back to "Oh, and Allen..."

The point at which every conversation broke down.

Even Kanda jumped in from time to time _without_ emergency-related prompting, a testament to just how pathetic the situation had become.

It came as a welcome relief when, sometime midway through the second week, Jo gave the all-clear for Lavi to leave his bed and explore the mansion with an escort. Crowley was off patrolling the grounds again, so Kanda was first to volunteer, muttering about everyone else's incompetence as he manned the wheelchair. Lavi suspected he was mostly just sick of having to interact with them while standing guard, but he kept his mouth shut, relieved at getting to see something other than his room.

They traversed the length of the third floor, where everyone had been staying, and Lavi requested to peek into a few of the other rooms, but nothing too interesting stood out besides one particular locked door. By his estimation, that was to be expected. In a mysterious mansion like this, he could guess that the secrets guarded themselves.

Lavi sighed in resignation, sinking down in his seat. "Damn, this is disappointing."

"What's your problem?" Kanda grumbled. "You get out of the room for the first time in over a week, and you're already groaning about being bored?"

Lavi sighed again. "No. I just can't picture you hauling me up or down those stairs in this thing, and I don't wanna be stuck on the third floor."

"Dumb rabbit," Kanda huffed. "There's an elevator." He spun Lavi to face a lattice-like metal gate at their end of the hall.

Tilting his head back, Lavi beamed up at his escort in appreciation. "Well then, onward!"

They rode the elevator down to the second floor first, slowly but surely. The moment Lavi was wheeled into the hallway, movement to the left caught his eye.

Allen jumped in place next to a nearby window. He dropped a book – or what looked like a tattered journal, actually – and gaped at them.

"W-what, ah..." he stammered. "What are you doing here?"

Lavi shrugged. "Jo said I could make the rounds. How 'bout you?" he asked, painting on a smirk. His eye flitted down to the journal and back to Allen. "Whatcha got there? Up to some mischief?"

Allen swooped down to gather a few loose papers and tucked the journal under his arm. "No, I just—"

"Of course you are," Kanda cut in.

Allen shot a withering glare past Lavi. "Fuck off, Kanda."

"Gladly," Kanda growled. He gave the wheelchair a light shove, propping himself against the wall by the elevator. " _You_ can entertain the rabbit for a few minutes. I'll be right here."

"Oh. All right," Allen said, rubbing at the back of his head sheepishly. He dug around in his pockets until he retrieved a deck of cards. "Care to see a new trick?"

Lavi burst out laughing. "Aw, he didn't mean it like that! I mean, I'm down for a performance after touring this floor, but I'd like to see as much as I can before Jo decides to confine me to the room again."

"Fine. I suppose it can wait." Allen took over behind the wheelchair and set off down the main hall, pushing Lavi along at a slow enough pace to examine each doorway they passed. Most opened to dusty, sparsely furnished bedrooms or storage space, and Lavi began to give up on finding anything else of interest on this floor, either.

Still, that journal had piqued his curiosity. Maybe he could talk Allen around to it – Lavi suspected it came from somewhere in the house, given its aged and worn-out appearance. After nearly two weeks stuck recovering in bed, Lavi longed for a library.

He didn't intend to leave the floor unexamined, though.

"Hey, Al?" Lavi asked, halting their progress upon arrival at the next likely underwhelming room. "Let's go check this one out."

"If you've got a good feeling about it, sure."

Inside, the room turned out to be a long-neglected study. A lone bookshelf cluttered with cobwebbed knickknacks was crammed into the corner, opposite a beaten up desk and chair. The window, however, looked out over the front of the estate. As they moved closer to it, Lavi's gaze locked onto the barren, twisted tree in a sea of gold outside. He took a sharp breath.

"Lavi, what is it?" Allen placed a hand on his shoulder, and Lavi flinched. "Sorry, I-I didn't mean to—"

Swallowing hard, Lavi said, "No, it's just… this place. That tree. I've seen it before."

He could picture it there, lurking like a shadow beyond the luminescent tree in his dreams.

"When?" Allen nearly whispered. "You were unconscious for the trip here, and you haven't left your room."

Rubbing between his eyebrows, Lavi considered whether sharing this information was advisable. He wasn't entirely sure how much Allen's knowledge might reach the Fourteenth, and there was an unsettling element of mystery to his Heart-related dreams.

Still, the Fourteenth already knew he had the Heart, which was arguably the most damning piece of information he could have gotten.

"Hey," Allen tried again, interrupting his thoughts. His expression suggested that he had guessed why Lavi was hesitating. "You can talk to me, you know. I don't think he will— that is, Nea doesn't have free access to my mind. When one of us is in control, the other just loses time with no memory of what happened."

Well, that explained why Allen had woken with no recollection of the Fourteenth's assault. Kanda and Link had only given Allen the gist, which was still sufficient to drive him away for days.

Doubling back to Allen's explanation, Lavi asked, "Nea? Is that the Fourteenth?"

"Yeah, that's him." Allen came around to stand by the window, slouching against the faded wallpaper. He suddenly narrowed his eyes at the door, and Lavi turned to see Link's blond braid flash by. Of course he was skulking near them.

The thought of their respective stalkers gave Lavi an odd sense of safety, but it was quickly eclipsed by shame over his own fear of his closest friend. The sooner he could take care of himself, the better. To that end, a bit more information about the mysterious Noah sharing Allen's body would come in handy.

Still, it wasn't as if Bookman would be forthcoming about his knowledge of the Noah and the Fourteenth with him, now. The old man could barely even look at his former apprentice, much less speak to him. Lavi weighed the pros and cons of delving into a number of burning questions with Allen instead. Arguably, he was a more direct source. There was also the bonus of being better informed for future incidents.

Lavi couldn't say no to the opportunity.

"So, whenever Nea takes over… Do you have any idea what brings that on?"

Allen blinked down at his boots. This was obviously far from a comfortable topic, but he seemed to steel himself with a long breath. "Not fully. The only thing we _know_ wakes him up is a strong reaction to Innocence – especially if it's in direct contact. Unfortunately, that makes using Crown Clown a challenge, but I can handle it if I focus hard enough. I also suspect that he might be targeting me in my sleep. Maybe because I'm more vulnerable then? Trust me, I wish I knew more."

It was a conundrum. Lavi thought back to his own dream experiences of late, where his Innocence had made contact and actual conversation through that medium. He also let his mind dart around to recollections of a few older texts on dream theory from his earlier training days. He could see a sort of logic to Allen and Nea's circumstance.

Lavi rested his cheek in one hand. "Well, it might be because your subconscious and his can connect during that state. I mean, just think of the mind as a separate dimension. Only creeps like Road and Wisely have the power to come and go in those spaces as they please, but in a dream state, there's a blurred boundary between your consciousness and Nea's, which makes him coming back over like crossing the shallows of a river."

Allen just stared, as if he had revealed some mystery of the cosmos.

"Hey now, don't look at me like that," Lavi laughed. "You've seen plenty of weird shit. You would've come to a similar conclusion eventually."

"No, I don't think so," Allen said, self-deprecating smile firmly in place as his hands found his pockets. "I'm a clown and an Exorcist by trade – neither one requires the mental gymnastics you just performed, Bookman Junior."

Lavi cringed, his stomach going hollow at the reminder. Allen didn't know that he had been dismissed. No one did, aside from Bookman himself. It was not technically even official until the Clan was informed, though that was hardly a comfort.

" _Affairs of the Bookman Clan are for Bookmen alone,"_ Bookman had said, tall and powerful in a six-year-old's eyes. It had been the first time Lavi had really felt like he belonged to something bigger than himself.

But that was in the past. Lavi schooled his features and waved off the comment.

"Whatever. The important thing is what to do with this information now."

"Never sleep again?" Allen said with a nervous laugh. "Kidding. It sounds like talismans are still the best solution."

"Eh, that's more of a short-term fix. Maybe you could try reasoning with the Fourteenth?" Lavi suggested, and Allen's eyes went wide at the idea, as if he had lost his mind.

"Have you _met_ him?" Allen countered, but he immediately froze, smacking himself in the forehead. "Ugh, nevermind. I am such an idiot."

Snorting, Lavi just pointed at the almost-healed bruise on his cheek. "Uh, yeah, I know he's kind of a creep. But even creeps have goals. You two have anything in common?"

"I guess… we both had a connection to my master. And we both care about Mana."

Lavi quirked his visible eyebrow. "He knew your adoptive dad _and_ your master? I mean, General Cross did spill some secrets, including the fact that the Fourteenth and Mana were brothers, so it begs the question of how your master knew that much. It all just sounded so crazy at the time. But it does kinda make sense, considering how Nea went full-on rage-fest at me right after cursing about Cross, for some reason."

Laughing hollowly, Allen muttered, "No surprise there."

Lavi tapped his chin for a moment. "Hang on. Doesn't that mean your pervy _uncle_ is possessing you?"

Allen deflated, moving to sit on the windowsill where he could plant his head in his hands. "God, my life is a shitshow."

"Hey, for what it's worth, you're not alone," Lavi tried. "Let's just make sense of what we can. It definitely sounds like you've got some material to work with."

"Not as much as you think. As you also noted, he hates Master," Allen mumbled through his hands.

"Who doesn't?" Lavi shrugged. "No offense to his memory, but the guy was a narcissist. Moving on. Just go with the Mana angle. I mean, Nea needs your body and your cooperation, right? Feel free to use me as leverage, too, because he is totally on team 'commandeer the Heart.' I may be disinclined to be of service when he acts like such a body-snatching dick."

"Ugh, I am _so sorry_ , Lavi," Allen groaned. "I'll never recover from this…"

Lavi reached out to pat his knee. "Don't beat yourself up, Al. I know it wasn't you. I knew it the second he made eye contact. I also know what it's like to have a Noah fuck with your brain and your body for their own sick purposes. So believe me when I say there are no hard feelings, got it?"

Finally lifting his head to face Lavi, Allen nodded once. He mirrored Lavi's smile, and a little piece of Lavi's heart crumbled at the brokenness behind that gesture. Lenalee had confided in him about it before – how Allen always smiled through the worst. How he would keep up the appearance to drive away the despair for everyone else around.

How very clown-like he was.

Lavi wanted to slap himself for ever being taken in by that smile.

"Oh, um," Allen stammered, abruptly pushing up to his feet and retrieving his card deck. "I promised you a trick."

Eyes tracking to the windowsill, Lavi spotted the journal again. "Actually— hold up a sec. I'm gonna go crazy if I don't see what that journal's about. Can I please take a look?"

Surprisingly, Allen just shrugged and tossed it into his lap. "Knock yourself out. I can't even read it – must be written in some sort of code. I only took it because it had Master's name inside the back cover. I just didn't want… well, anyone else confiscating it. But I trust you."

Lavi took a quick peek inside the back cover. Sure enough, Cross Marian's name was scrawled in the lower right corner, complete with a miniature sketch of his smirking face. Annoyed at the reminder of the man's arrogant existence, Lavi closed the journal. Maybe it was nothing more than Cross defacing a random book, but at least now he had something to read for later.

Allen returned to his deck, shuffling the cards effortlessly between his hands. He fanned them out in front of Lavi. "Take one."

"Oh, it's _this_ trick," Lavi scoffed, taking a card. "Thought you said it was a new one."

"Maybe I changed my mind," Allen quipped. "Now, memorize the card."

"Don't patronize me," Lavi chuckled, returning his card after looking at it for a mere fraction of a second. He fought the urge to roll his eyes at having drawn the king of hearts.

"Don't steal my show." Allen shuffled the deck again, this time more dramatically, the cards flying from hand to hand in rapid lines and arcs without a single slip. Finally, Allen reformed the stack and tapped the top card, a secretive grin on his face.

He held up the ace of spades.

"Is this your card?"

Lavi's jaw dropped. His throat would not work. It didn't matter that this was not the card he had drawn – clearly that was not Allen's intent.

"I-I— How?"

Allen placed the card in his hand and closed his fingers around it. "It was in your old coat. I appreciate you holding onto it for me, but I was able to get a replacement, so… I figured you should keep it. If you like."

He left the rest unsaid. It lingered in Allen's expression, though – his understanding of what Lavi's actions meant. Allen knew enough to go this far, to return the memento. Lavi realized that he had let more of his innermost self slip into view than he had accounted for. The thought crossed his mind – not for the first time – that his days as Bookman's apprentice might have been numbered long before his final failure.

Surely being this wrapped around the axle over a playing card was beyond the scope of superficial attachment. He really could not bring himself to care, though.

_Not like I can be the Bookman anymore_ , Lavi thought, his heart heavy with the dueling emotions of relief and remorse. But Allen's card had haunted him long before now.

Lavi slipped the ace into an inner pocket of his jacket. "Thanks, Allen. I'll keep it safe."

Suddenly, Link cleared his throat from the doorway. Both of them snapped to the sound.

"You have a visitor," he said, directing the comment at Allen.

Lucia bobbed into view, Urcanpy flitting around her head. The golem whizzed over to Allen once they crossed the threshold.

"You silly thing," Lucia muttered, waving a hand at the golem as it settled affectionately on Allen's shoulder. "Listen, Allen. Jo's been looking for you – she says it's time you stopped moping and went to see Miss Katerina. After all, isn't that what General Cross sent you here to do?"

"Oh right, that," Allen chuckled weakly. "I thought Jo said she was in a coma, though."

Lucia sighed, pulling at his hand regardless. "Jo says it's important for you to see her. Period. So we're going."

"Hey, wait a moment." Allen wriggled his hand free and returned to the back of the wheelchair. "We're taking Lavi, too."

"Fine, if that's what you'd prefer," she huffed. "Follow me."

* * *

As soon as Allen and Lavi got back to the elevator, Kanda opened the grate, and he and Link followed them inside without a word. Lavi noted Lucia's longsuffering sigh as she realized their whole entourage would be along for the visit.

It was quite the awkward ride. Lavi decided that his time was best spent flipping through the mysterious journal Allen had acquired. He inspected the cover first, looking for any tells about the contents but finding none, and moved on to the first page.

His eyes widened in shock. He knew this language, as did his own master.

It was the ancient language of the Bookman Clan.

Lavi said nothing. He continued to read through the first page, though it was slow going. His recognition and use of the written script was rusty. Recording information in it was reserved for only the most protected texts. Lavi had rarely seen it, and then only in the oldest of scrolls cracked with age. It was hard to wrap his mind around someone using it for his personal journal – much less someone like Cross Marian.

He tucked the thought away, hoping against hope for the chance to ask Bookman.

That first page appeared to be a roughly organized table of contents. Lavi had just begun puzzling over the unorthodox use of descriptions surrounding the word for "tree" in the fourth line when Allen stopped the wheelchair in front of a door.

Lucia inserted a small key and pushed it open with a grunt. The hinges creaked noisily, but a fair amount of scuffs on the floorboards indicated frequent traffic – probably just Jo and Lucia, Lavi guessed. They all followed the girl inside.

A queen bed took up the center of the room. On it laid a woman who looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties at most, sleeping peacefully under the covers with her hands folded on her stomach. Dark, wavy hair splayed over the pillowcase, and only the neckline and sleeves of a fancy violet nightgown were otherwise visible. There was nothing else in the room beyond a large wardrobe to their right and the medical equipment surrounding the bed.

"I'm going to get Jo," Lucia announced, turning on her heel. "Mind your manners in here – no shouting or fighting, period. Urcanpy will see it if you do."

After she left, the awkward silence settled back in like a fog.

Kanda exhaled sharply. "Well, this blows." He started pacing around the room, while Link took up a post by the only window available.

"Wonder how long she's been sleeping," Lavi said, mostly to himself. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something about the woman's presence felt familiar. An aura he had sensed before. He was not inclined to share, though.

Allen sighed, crossing his arms on the back of the wheelchair. He rested his chin on Lavi's head. "Sorry I dragged you into this. I don't know what I expected to see here."

"Yeah, you should be sorry, beansprout," Kanda sniped from across the room.

"It's _still_ Allen," Allen hissed back.

Lavi chuckled. "So, you know anything about this mystery lady, Katerina?"

"Jo says she raised Nea and Mana as her own twin boys," Allen replied. "But after everything that happened between the two brothers as Noah, the Earl came back and tried to kill her. Apparently she's been in a coma here ever since."

Link cut his eyes over to them. "She's been in a coma for thirty-five years?"

"Guess so," Allen replied, his chin tilting against Lavi's head.

Lavi's eye scrutinized the woman again. "No way. If she's their mother, and they had already grown up when the Fourteenth turned against the Noah and the Earl returned, she should be over sixty by now. It looks like she hasn't aged at all."

"Maybe that's what Jo wanted me to see?" Allen wondered aloud. "Master said I needed to find this mansion and Katerina Eve Campbell. But that was a dream..."

"I assure you it was real enough, idiot apprentice."

Allen startled at the familiar voice, and Lavi craned his neck around. To their collective shock, General Cross Marian strolled out of the wardrobe as if he were fashionably late to his own party. He closed the door behind him with a flourish of his arm.

"Why the sour face?" Cross asked, taking a drag on his cigarette. He flapped a dismissive hand at Allen. "You've managed to survive being overtaken for this long, and you've also managed to recover my bastard progeny."

He flicked a few cigarette ashes in Lavi's direction, the slight crinkle of his nose indicating that he found his appearance somewhat wanting. "Genetics are such a gamble. You – whatever your name is this time – you're a disgrace to the hair you were born with."

"W-What?" Lavi choked. _Progeny?_

"Come now," Cross continued, walking toward them. His sharp eyes still regarded Lavi like an insect in the dirt. "Surely that brain of yours is not entirely a waste. You remember me from your childhood, yes?"

Somehow, Lavi made his mouth work. "Only because you visited the brothel, and found out I was an accommodator—"

"Nonsense. Had you been any ordinary accommodator, my duty was to turn you over to the care of the Order," Cross droned, as if it was a chore to explain that much. "Not that I have much use for protocol. You never wondered why I handed you over to the Bookman instead? It's not exactly common to have the gifts of our line. But nevermind all that. Is the Heart Innocence active, now?"

Nodding dumbly, Lavi tried to process the landslide of insanity he was hearing. This elusive and notoriously unscrupulous man was his _father_? The man who put Allen through hell, and who had mysterious connections with the Fourteenth? And now, here he stood – not only _alive_ but spewing epiphanies and speaking of the entire Heart debacle as if it was old news to him?

Lavi vaguely noticed Cross shift his stare of judgment to Allen instead. "I take it none of you had the intestinal fortitude to tell this poor fool the truth about his parentage, then? Or were you all too dimwitted to note the obvious? Then again, with that ragged excuse for a haircut and utter lack of charm, I suppose it couldn't be helped…"

Link remained flabbergasted, his mouth hanging open despite his lack of words. Lavi could see Kanda maintaining his glowering silence from the door, voice sharp as he snapped, "His name is Lavi, you sellout."

"He's a disappointment no matter what name he happens to be using right now," Cross sniped back, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Behind the wheelchair, Allen clamped down on the handles and was shaking so much that Lavi felt the vibrations. Growling, Allen spat, " _Maybe_ we didn't want to give him any more bad news, asshole! We all thought you were _dead_!"

"Ungrateful as ever, I see," the general drawled. He took another drag on the cigarette. "Anyhow, on to more important things. You've finally followed my directions and found one Katerina Eve Campbell, at least."

"Yeah, and she's been _super_ helpful," Allen ground out, tone laced with sarcasm as he flung an arm out toward the unconscious woman on the bed. Even through his lingering stupefaction, Lavi felt the anger radiating off his friend.

Cross gestured impatiently at the wardrobe. "She was never the target, only a clue to the point of my return. Do you really think I would risk giving away my whereabouts in advance? Your mind is far from impenetrable to the Noah, and certainly not to that abomination of Innocence known as Apocryphos."

"How do we even know whose side you're on?" Link finally spoke up. Something in the way he narrowed his eyes at the general made Lavi wonder what else he hadn't said.

Chuckling to himself, Cross just shook his head. "Quite the faithful dog, aren't you? Care to share with the class exactly whose side _you_ are on, Inspector?"

Link hesitated for a moment, but he clenched his fists and declared, "I am here to protect Allen Walker. I can't speak for the higher authorities' agenda regarding my assignment, but that fact remains."

"Ah, so it does have a spine," Cross chuckled again. He held out his cigarette, and to their surprise Urcanpy flew right over to gobble it down.

Cross directed his smirk at Kanda for the first time. "So that just leaves our newest renegade general, if I'm not mistaken. Where do your loyalties lie then, Second?"

"It's none of your fucking business," Kanda declared.

General Cross only shrugged in response. He moved to the bedside, placing his hand atop Katerina's. "A real shame. The only beautiful woman in this place is dreaming her life away."

"Care to run that by us again, you old scoundrel?"

Lavi turned to see Jo leaning against the doorframe, a timid Lucia peeking around from behind her. The older woman clucked her tongue at Cross in disapproval.

"You're as late and insulting as usual, Marian," she drawled. "Why don't you cut these kids a break and come pay a visit to Bookman. He's asking for you."

"I expected as much," Cross said, sounding bored. He casually strode past Lavi and Allen without a second glance, following Jo from the room with a careless wave. Urcanpy floated along after him.

Lavi took a few seconds to recover his wits. A headache was definitely coming on. Internally, he still reeled from the revelation of his lineage – he couldn't tell if he was more shocked by the news or frustrated that he was somehow last to know. Lavi had no doubt that Bookman was aware, given Cross' reference to his abilities. But how had everyone else found out?

Was there anything else they were keeping from him? Lavi shoved the thought away. Paranoia never served emotional situations well.

Forcing himself back to the present, Lavi glanced around, sensing the oppressive silence smothering everyone still in the room. He tipped his head back to look up at Allen. Any lingering annoyance faded at the furious look on his friend's face. At least Lavi was only related to Cross – Allen had actually been _trained_ by the asshole. No wonder he hadn't wanted to share the news.

"Hey Al, you still with us?" Lavi prompted.

Allen nodded, but he scrubbed at his eyes.

"I fucking hate that man. I swear…"

Kanda circled back from another round of pacing, scowling at the exchange. "Pull yourself together, beansprout. You're wasting tears on that prick."

Lavi snorted, unable to stop himself. "Yuu, you're my hero right now."

"Shut the fuck up, rabbit."

* * *

General Cross did not grace them again with his presence over the next three days, but his various declarations – and Allen's ongoing ties to the Campbell family's mysteries – had Lavi more determined than ever to turn the mansion inside out for information.

If only Jo hadn't sentenced him to another round of bed rest. Lavi had wanted to protest, but it was hard to argue with the directive after he'd passed out just trying to stretch his legs.

Luckily, his friends were more than willing to compensate for his lack of movement. They scoured every room for curious items to report or deliver, focusing especially on any items in written form. Lavi's bed had transformed into a personal study, piled high with a mountain of albums, old letters, notebooks, and leather-bound volumes the others had gathered.

Now, Lavi's nose was buried in Cross's journal again, following the trail of the strange tree-related term from its table of contents since before dawn.

" _La_ vi," Allen whined from somewhere between the book stacks, his head no longer visible. "You're going to wreck your good eye, reading in this light. It's too early…"

He cut off with a yawn, sitting up to stretch in his chair like a ruffled but graceful cat. "I don't know how you expect to get through all these books, either."

Smirking behind the journal, Lavi scoffed, "Don't ever underestimate my speed-reading talent. But for the record, I'm doing research here, not reading them cover to cover."

"Good morning, gents!" Johnny announced, grinning broadly as he marched into the room with a tea tray and a bag slung over one shoulder. "You'll never believe what I found for you, Lavi!"

"If it's another book, egghead, I'm chucking it out the window," Kanda grumbled from the doorway.

"Touchy," Allen muttered, covering his eyes with one arm. "Think the wall's gonna survive without you holding it up there, Sir Kanda. Why don't you go take a nap?"

"Yeah, I'll abandon my post when you do, Chair Lord."

Lavi just shook his head and put the journal down, fighting not to laugh. "Chill out, guys. Alright, Johnny, what've you got this time?"

Pushing aside some of the books, Johnny placed the bag on the bed. He pulled out a pair of silver shears, a comb and a towel, brandishing them with a triumphant smile.

"It's a do-it-yourself barber kit!" he beamed. "We're all looking a little raggedy, so I figured I could make the rounds. Crowley let me do a practice trim on his hair last night, and it turned out pretty good. I thought you should be next up, Lavi. Unless Allen wanted to go first?"

"No thank you," Allen mumbled, one arm draped over the back of the chair as he rubbed his eyes. "I'm growing it out a bit."

_Could you be any more adorable?_ Lavi stamped out the thought, still trying to keep a lock on his emotions, but he was unable to wipe the grin off his face.

"You're a lifesaver, Johnny," Lavi said as he scooted to the edge of the mattress and took up the crutch Jo had brought for him. "Think I'll have to use the chair, though. Sorry, Al."

"All yours," Allen said, standing a bit unsteadily and gesturing grandly at the seat. He yawned again as he shuffled past, picking at the talismans stuck to his Innocence arm in annoyance. "Does this mean I can take the bed?"

Lavi laughed. "Yeah, just try not to knock the books off."

"I make no promises," Allen slurred, all but collapsing onto the upper half of the bed and curling into a ball. The disturbance did topple one stack of letters and a particularly thick volume cataloguing regional botany, but Johnny was quick to sweep everything back into place.

Lavi stopped to tug part of the blanket over Allen, who looked to be sound asleep already. His friend was clearly done in.

"Hey, Link, has Allen really been sleeping in this chair for three nights straight?" he asked as he plopped into the chair, drawing the man's attention from the tea tray. Lavi twisted uncomfortably against the worn upholstery, but stilled when Johnny settled the towel around his shoulders and started combing out the mess of his hair.

"Other than occasional stretches on the floor, yes," Link replied, pouring a cup of tea. "Believe me, I tried to talk him out of it – that did not go well."

Across the room, Kanda smirked. "Should've just knocked him out. Rookie mistake."

"Geez, Yuu," Lavi sighed. "Don't you think he takes enough beatings because of that brain invader? Maybe go easy on Allen when he's not the enemy."

He looked back to the bed, noting the dark circles under Allen's eyes and the pallor over his skin. Even if Link had failed, Lavi knew he was going to have to try another tactic, and soon.

Johnny grabbed Lavi's head and adjusted it forward again, snorting. "Hey, I won't get this trimmed evenly if you keep looking away. Pretty sure Allen's not going anywhere."

"Ah, sorry," Lavi muttered, beating back the burn in his cheeks.

Kanda rolled his eyes from his post, directly in Lavi's line of sight, but thankfully made no comment. Lavi could imagine the lecture – and probably beating about the head – that Bookman would be giving him right about now, and he almost missed it.

Almost.

* * *

That night was the first time the entire group was deemed fit enough for a proper meal in the dining room. Cross, Tiedoll, Kanda and Bookman never showed – all four of them absent due to the General-level discussions that were being had, or so they said. Oddly, their absences gutted the group of almost all preconditions for spontaneous fighting, so the meal was mostly quiet. Link was their only remaining 'babysitter,' and for some reason Johnny and Crowley had made it their mission to latch on to the CROW and interrogate him throughout the evening.

They were still at it as everyone left the dining room, in fact. Lavi, finally able to maneuver without the chair for short periods of time, crutched along at his usual pace behind the others once they filed out, heading back to their quarters, but Allen stopped him before they could round the corner to the main hallway.

"Quick, this way," he said, pulling Lavi by the arm. "Now's our chance."

"Wha—?" Lavi choked.

"No time to explain. Hurry!" They stumbled down a side hall toward a narrower flight of stairs as quickly as his crutch would allow. The hall at the bottom was dimly lit, but Allen seemed to know exactly where he was going. He dragged Lavi along until they reached a door at the end. Despite his progress, Lavi was still out of breath by the time the short trip ended, his grip on the crutch somewhat shaky.

"Come on," Allen muttered, fumbling with a key in the lock as rapid footsteps sounded from the floor above.

Allen finally turned the key with a satisfying click, and they both dove inside, slamming the door behind them before Allen had the presence of mind to flip the lock. Not a second later, though, he groaned in frustration. "Well, shit."

The room was pitch black, though Lavi's eye was already adjusting. A shiver went down his spine at the musty oppressiveness of the space. Something smelled sickeningly familiar, though he could not place it yet. It took a few deep breaths – and a tight grip on Allen's arm – to get his bearings.

Lavi chuckled nervously. "Well, now that you've, uh, locked us both in a deep dark dungeon, probably infested with gross bugs, care to explain?"

"You'll still hear me out?" Allen sighed, freeing his arm to latch onto Lavi's hand instead.

"Well, yeah. What else am I gonna do?"

With a short, humorless laugh, Allen explained, "I really wanted to show you this room – just you. We weren't ever going to get away from Kanda _and_ Link, so I came up with a plan to sneak out after dinner. Johnny was helping me, and Lucia got me the key. Not that it matters if we're stuck in the dark."

"Well, you're in luck," Lavi crowed. "I might just see a lamp on that desk over there. With a little more luck, I'll find some matches, too."

"You can _see_? Even my vision isn't cutting it here."

"I can also see you're impressed." Lavi smiled wryly at his own joke, knowing Allen was still too blind to catch it.

"Oh, come off it," Allen pouted. His face, just like everything else in the room, may have registered as a dim grayscale to Lavi's enhanced vision, but the way that pout turned back up to a hesitant smile made his chest flutter.

"All right, you stay put," Lavi announced, positioning his crutch and picking his way to the desk. Shockingly enough, a small matchbook lay beside the lamp. Once he had lit it, the study came to life in all its messy glory. Flickering light spilled over a slew of papers, the dusty spines of books and journals, aged scrolls stuffed into any available spaces, and a single busted painting below the only section of wall not occupied by a bookshelf.

Lavi's eye finally tracked down to the floor. Chalk marks and dark discolorations on the floorboards arrested his attention. He clutched at his shirt in a momentary flash of panic, unable to stop the memories of similar sights from the Ark.

"Allen," he rasped, swallowing over his suddenly dry throat, "what is this room, exactly? W-why did you want _me_ to see it?"

"I think it was Nea's study," Allen said, crossing to join him by the desk. He placed a hand on Lavi's shoulder. "Are you okay? We don't have to stay here, I just thought you'd want to see where Master's journal came from. I'm sure there's more than enough to keep you occupied, but the room is technically off-limits, and it would've been far too much to haul upstairs, so—"

He stopped, rubbing at the back of his head, and cracked a smile. "Sorry, I'm rambling."

"No, it's amazing. Really," Lavi said, finally coming back to himself. He returned the smile and ruffled Allen's hair. "Seeing as it's only a matter of time before our bodyguards track us down and break in, I'd better get started."

He already had a good idea of what to check first. "Where did you find that journal?"

"Oh, it was in here," Allen explained, opening up the bottom desk drawer.

Other assorted writing tools and inkwells filled the drawer, but that wasn't what caught Lavi's attention. He knelt next to the drawer and started pulling everything out. Sure enough, the inside of the drawer was much too shallow for what the dimensions should have allowed, and its weight belied additional contents. Lavi felt around inside until his fingertips found a small groove in the back seam. He pressed in and was able to lift out the bottom of the drawer, revealing a hidden collection of thin notebooks.

"Bingo," he whispered, not really sure why he was keeping his voice down. While Lavi always enjoyed digging out secrets, it felt like there was a reverence to the discovery that he couldn't put his finger on.

"Want the light down here?" Allen asked, and Lavi spared a short nod. He had already pulled out the entire stack of notebooks, checking them for identification and dates in their covers.

Flipping through the first one, he asked absently, "Who do you think 'Eli' was?"

"No idea," Allen said. "Is that the name in those notebooks?"

"No, just this one," Lavi replied. He checked the second, but its entries were signed 'Raj.' After the third bearing yet another name, Lavi finally realized what the nagging sense at the back of his mind was about – the handwriting was identical. Regardless of the alias signed or the language used, it was clear that the same person had written in all the journals here, just as Lavi himself had kept various notebooks during his travels.

And without thinking too hard, Lavi recognized the style of writing. It matched that of Cross' cryptic journal. The interlocking pieces of information now pointed to one conclusion.

"Oh, _fuck_ no," Lavi hissed, dropping the notebook in his hands. He held his head.

"What is it?" Allen was right there, a hand at his back. "Did you figure out who it was?"

"Yeah. Cross wrote _all_ of these."

"He did?"

"Al, I think— Actually, I'm pretty much certain your master was an apprentice Bookman," Lavi forced through his teeth. Gods, how he wished to escape the reminders of his former title, but it haunted him at every turn. "That other journal of his was written in the Bookmen's language, too. Which means he's the one who failed before me."

Allen took a sharp breath. "Oh. You… didn't know that?"

Lavi's eyes went wide. " _You_ did?"

"More like Nea did," Allen muttered, toying with the cuff of his sleeve. "Cross was in his memories, along with Bookman. Bookman ended up confirming my suspicions to all of us when I brought it up. I thought your master would have told you something like that already. Then again, I also thought he'd told you about my master being your, um—"

"Sperm donor?" Lavi offered, quirking an eyebrow at Allen's hesitation.

"Deadbeat Dad?" Allen countered, shrugging. "I could probably claim the same, but that would require acknowledging him as a father figure and that's horrifying, so I'll pass."

Despite the heaviness of the moment, Lavi snorted. "Thanks for that. He doesn't exactly deserve a better title. And I really oughtta be used to getting left in the dark by now."

"Did Bookman at least tell you about your Innocence?" Allen asked in a low voice. "Or was my master's declaration just another shock for you?"

Lavi's hand reflexively went to his side. "Yeah, Bookman did tell me about that. We've had some bum luck, huh?" He tried to smile, but it crumbled almost instantly. He still hadn't told Allen or any of the others about everything the situation entailed for him. Allen would be sure to take on that guilt on top of everything else, even though there was nothing he could have done, and Lavi didn't want to cause him even more grief.

Forcing his thoughts away from his own future, Lavi rattled on, "I mean, I guess this is better than sharing headspace with a Noah, right?"

"Ha, you have a point—"

Allen cut off with a violent shudder.

"What's wr—?" Lavi began, before sensing the change himself. A sudden chill descended upon the room, the shadows curling across the floor in deep black ribbons as a low, rumbling chuckle echoed around them. Allen leapt to his feet, turning away from Lavi to strike a defensive pose.

"Oh, I wouldn't wish _your_ headspace on anyone, bookworm. Not even the Fourteenth."

A full-body shock of recognition hit Lavi at the deceptively smooth, deep voice, paralyzing him where he sat. His brain screamed that he should _run_ , to no avail. Allen just clenched his fists and held his ground between the intruder and Lavi.

But Lavi didn't need to see the Noah to know it was Tyki Mikk. He could smell it.

The earthy scent of Tyki's cigarettes forever clung to the man's presence, even when he wasn't smoking. It had been in the room since they first arrived, the barest traces lingering in the air – warning signs of a slow but imminent demise.

" _Shh, don't move. Wouldn't want me to crush your spine by accident, now would we?"_ The memory hit without warning, as if the foul odor alone was enough to drag him back. He could feel the weight of Tyki on top of him, hands _inside him_ as fingers traced along his vertebrae one by one—

God, it was getting hard to breathe.

"Whatever hole you crawled out of, I suggest you crawl back in," Allen hissed, his arm twitching and sizzling as the talismans kept his Innocence restrained. " _Now_."

"Adorable as it is, your chivalry is wasted here, boy," Tyki purred. Allen shifted just enough for Lavi to catch the smirk on the Noah's face. Tyki lounged against the blank wall, kicking aside the broken painting as he pulled a new cigarette to his lips and lit it. "You shouldn't go stabbing the messenger, after all."

Allen sliced his unimpeded arm through the air as he fired back, "I'm not interested in your sick games. You can take your fucking message and shove it up your ass!"

"Hmph, you're even feistier than the last time we met," Tyki said, puffing out a laugh along with a trail of smoke. He cocked his head to one side, his smirk sharpening as he peered around Allen. "I don't suppose your special friend spoke very highly of me. I'm not terribly patient with the quiet ones. Couldn't be helped, really."

The smell was suffocating Lavi – he felt sure his stomach was about to expel his dinner onto the paper-strewn floor. He could not speak. From where he sat, his eye frantically scanned the room for any means of cover or escape but came up woefully short.

"You bastard," Allen growled, his left arm absolutely electric with its attempts to activate in spite of the talismans. Lavi felt helpless, petrified on the floor as Allen readied for a fight, but it was all he could do to focus on breathing. He could still feel Tyki's hands tracing along his sides, digging in and _twisting at his intestines and_ —

The hopelessness of their situation had barely sunk in, desperate thoughts blooming and dying in Lavi's mind over several heartbeats, when a deafening crash from the entrance exploded into a cloud of dust and debris.

Through the cloud, a flash of metallic red shot toward Tyki's position, followed by a tearing noise and a cry.

"Kanda!" Allen shouted, relief soaking the word.

The dust settled. Kanda stormed toward them, Link right behind and looking almost equally peeved, while Crowley brought up the rear.

"Don't even start with me, you fucking moron!" Kanda growled. "You're _next_!" He grabbed Allen by the collar and gave him a rough shake before releasing him to face Tyki again.

The shock of Kanda's entrance shattered the panic that froze Lavi's limbs. He struggled to his feet, clutching his crutch with a white-knuckled grip, and scrambled back until he bumped against one of the bookshelves, as far from Tyki as he could get. He ignored the worried look Allen shot him in lieu of regaining control of his breath, his hands shaking as he leaned heavily on the crutch.

Crowley rushed to his side in a blur of motion and tried to help steady him. "Are you hurt, Lavi? Did he attack?"

Still fighting to calm his frantic breathing, Lavi just shook his head.

"Ugh," Tyki groaned across the room. Mugen had him skewered to the wall, apparently leaving him unable to phase out. He glared at the group, spitting blood to the floor.

"Don't know why I've bothered coming here to warn you ungrateful heathen," he coughed. "Guess I'm not quite ready to lose my favorite victims just yet," he added, punctuating his words with a grin that turned grimace. "Either way, you all need to haul ass out of this mansion."

The declaration was met with an uneasy silence.

"And why is that?" Link asked first.

Tyki tried pulling at Mugen, his palms audibly searing from the contact, and finally wrested it free. He sagged against the wall and cradled his stomach wound, kicking the sword across the room. "Because that Innocence abomination is on the loose, and it's after the Heart and the Fourteenth as we speak," he choked out. "My even more demented brother and company are using Apocryphos to track them both down. Not exactly sporting if you ask me."

"How do we know you're not lying?" Allen retorted. "You could be trying to lure us out into the open, for all we know. It's pretty damned _on-brand_ for you."

Recovering Mugen, Kanda slashed it through the air. "Agreed. I'd rather carve your heart out like you did to Chaoji, you fucking scum."

Across the room, Tyki let out a throaty chuckle, groping at the wall until a door – Road's door – appeared out of thin air. "Say whatever you want about me, but _I'm_ not the one who's going to get everyone in this mansion killed by staying here. It's been a pleasure, as always."

He stumbled through the checkered exit, the shadows receding after him. Road's door was gone in a blink.

Lavi fixed his eye on the journals now scattered across the floor, barely hearing the reaction from everyone else at Tyki's ominous message. His nerves were frayed beyond reckoning, his skin coated in cold sweat, and he honestly wanted to puke. There could be no mistaking Tyki's meaning, which was somehow more loathsome than his predatory grin.

The Heart was endangering everyone.


End file.
